Why do CPU's cost so much?

[MacAlisterL]

Like seriously there is only 2 pieces of metal and a circuit board and a die. Where does the cost come from?

[Ostwind]

really? the materials isn't what makes them expensive. Research and Development ain't free mate.

[Stardar1]

Like seriously there is only 2 pieces of metal and a circuit board and a die. Where does the cost come from?

Using acid to etch a block of silicon into tiny little transistors

[Tagiau]

You have a very bad perspective of how cpu's are made. 

[MacAlisterL]

You have a very bad perspective of how cpu's are made. 

Well... I'm sorry that I let you down

[Guest Generallee]

Partly because they are a pain in the ass to research, also partly because AMD isn't competitive enough to bring the prices down so Intel is basically pricing them whatever they feel like

[vectorx5000]

You have a very bad perspective of how cpu's are made. 

^^

They are very complicated, and intel essentially has a monopoly.

[QueenDemetria]

Like seriously there is only 2 pieces of metal and a circuit board and a die. Where does the cost come from?

It isn't that simple. Lots of R&D goes into making a CPU, and the actual process of making a CPU isn't cheap either.

[Carl2608]

Development, Marketing, shipping and resale. someone has to make a living of it 

[ZetZet]

Skylake i7 has 1,750,000,000 transistors in that tiny chip. Yes. 1.75 BILLION. 

[minibois]

There goes a lot of money into R&D (Research and Development)

[Oshino Shinobu]

 

They're not exactly simple to design and make. 

[Majestic]

Fucking magnets, 

 

How do they work?

[Deathstroke]

Licensing is also considered in the price.

[Virtual01]

On top of expensive R&D, the manufacturing process is extremely precise and requires top end equipment.

[Ryoutarou97]

Over at intel they want to make a new series of CPUs. They spend a lot of money to design a new microarchitecture and maybe figure out how to shrink to 10nm too. then some guy says: Let's make a new factory since we have to make these somewhere and none of ours are set up for the process! They spend billions of dollars to make this factory with the clean room (very expensive), custom made machines (very expensive), and all that stuff. All that to fabricate billions of transistors on large wafers to make into CPUs. Some of these CPUs aren't even good enough to make it further, but those that are must then be cuts and put into the heat spreader and onto a mini-PCB which is, by the way, covered in over a thousand spikes of gold tracing back to the CPU itself. This must then be put in a box that will prevent it from breaking and at last they can start selling the damn things. All those costs must be offset by sales of the CPUs they produced. A lot will go into laptops and the ones that remain are sold to you. With a new microarchitecture each year a new foundry has to be established and the old one scrapped because nobody wants to buy more GPUs made on the old process (well, stock exceeds demand). The prices are that high because without it they could not afford to make CPUs if they weren't. Well, they could cut profit margins, but why do that?

[Anarchyz11]

Lets say you and a group of 10 friends invent a new "Widget" that 99% of the world's population has no idea how to make.  You took a year to invent the widget, and can now make them for $9 each.  During that year, a local bank gave you some cash so you could all feed yourselves during that year and you lived in Mom's basement.

 

But you also have to pay your friends who helped you build the widget, and they want $2 per widget for their work.  Since the widget only costs $9 to physically make, do you charge $10 for it and make a profit?  No, because you have to pay the people who helped you make it.  You also have to pay the bank back, and your Mom back for letting you live in her basement for a year.

 

So now you're charging $50 a widget even though they only cost $9 to physically make.  

[RustyZombie]

I'm amazed at the number of people that think it should be their right to buy products at the material cost, despite that often being a small percentage of the total cost.  And screw the workers that make them, who need to feed their families.  And of course the people that invented/developed the product don't deserve to see any compensation for their effort.

[Jordaneer]

A fab where they make CPU's can cost literally Billions of dollars, TSMC spent over 9 billion on a fab. But a cheap fan is at least 1-2 billion dollars. And Intel is building new fabs every 2 years or so.