How Computers are Built

Computers are fabulously complex devices, and their construction reflects that.

No single person could ever build a modern computer from scratch. Experts in many fields who have very special knowledge about manipulating elements and electricity work on various parts of the design. Many of the components needed in a modern computer are only manufactured in certain parts of the world. Some of the elements needed to create these same components often have to be shipped from the one or two places they are available on Earth.

Copper Ore

You can't build a computer without raw materials. The first step is to extract these from the Earth. These include iron, manganese, copper, aluminum, tin, silver, gold, silicon, lithium, glass, latex, artificial gemstones, and compounds that are extremely rare in nature, but serve specific purposes in circuits.

Refined Copper Coils

These raw materials are in most cases refined several times to meet very specific quality requirements. These raw, refined materials then go to factories that build components.

Motherboard

Component makers buy raw materials and craft the individual parts that get built onto circuit boards. Iron and steel are turned into wire. Sand made of silica is refined and melted into high quality glass. Aluminum cans that look like small batteries are formed to make capacitors. Silicon wafers are etched with circuits that contain wires hundreds of times smaller than a human hair. Complex components, like motors and transformers, are usually wound with thousands of coils of wire in moments by robotic machines. These raw components are offered to OEMs, or Original Equipment Manufacturers, in many different varieties. The OEM designs the needed circuitry and determines what specific values are needed among the components, and orders the needed parts in the tens of thousands of units.

Resistors on Paper Tape

The new components arrive at the OEM in long strips of paper tape, with the thousands of components lined up on the paper like a machine gun belt. A motherboard is a large silicon board that these components get installed onto. The board has holes and traces that match with the components that should go in each space.

Special machines are fed the paper rolls of components. These machines separate the component from the feed roll, align it with the correct location on the board, and solder it in place. This kind of assembly makes it possible to build thousands of boards per day.

Like motherboards, other devices are designed, have parts purchased for, are built by sophisticated machinery, and are produced in the thousands or millions. Hard drives, monitors, RAM modules, SSDs, cases, and nearly any other part that might be installed in a computer are made this way and then shipped to the computer manufacturer.

The computer manufacturer buys components and assembles them into fully-built computers. A single computer generally contains several large devices that can be swapped in and out for the purposes of upgrade or repair. Cables and devices are matched in relatively intuitive ways to keep errors in the build process from ruining hardware.

Usually, a build starts with the computer case, which is prepped with various screws. Then, the motherboard is lowered into the case and screwed down. The processor and RAM are then plugged into the motherboard. Any expansion cards needed, such as specialized video and sound cards, network cards, or GPU-based hash miners are added to the available slots. Hard drives, optical disc drives, SSDs and other storage devices are added and plugged into the motherboard. The power supply is installed, and since all devices must have power, is connected in many places to the various devices in the system.

Various small tweaks can be performed at this point, and the case gets the cover screwed on and the hardware build is complete. At this point, the computer needs an operating system installed.