Have you ever wondered how a motherboard is made? If so, take a peek at this pictorial tour of mobo manufacturer Gigabyte's production facility!

    Before company executives let us into the production facility, a company spokesman gave us a corporate overview, outlining the company's hierarchy and management team. Like virtually all of its competitors, Gigabyte has expanded from being just another board company to a system builder as well; the company builds desktop PCs and notebooks, and has even entered the mobile-phone business, building phones for companies like U.K. carrier O2. Its most recent business is in PC power supplies and cooling.

    Overall, Gigabyte's manufacturing capacity is enough to build 1.5 million motherboards, 600,000 graphics cards, 300,000 desktop PCs, 20,000 notebooks, 30,000 servers, 20,000 mobile phones, and 100,000 PC chasses, all per month.

    In 2006, Gigabyte's growth was largely flat; the company recorded 46.69 billion NT ($1.41 billion), up slightly from 45.61 billion NT ($1.38 billion) the year prior. Why? Windows Vista. Customers held off on purchasing new systems and components over compatibility fears, and customers like Gigabyte suffered. Interestingly, the company only sells percent of its products to OEMs like Dell and HP; the bulk of it (60 percent) goes to distributors to sell to end users.

    In the accompanying slideshow, we'll give you a better idea of how a motherboard is manufactured, from start to finish.

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