How much do components cost to manufacture?

[Benergy]

So I was just wondering, leaving aside R&D and other expenses, how much does a CPU, or GPU for example cost to manufacture?

Are there any figures out there? 

 

For example when we buy a CPU, is only 5% of what we pay going towards the actual piece of hardware? (I'm not criticising this, just curious)

[potatoproduction]

There is a good article about this here

 http://www.cnet.com/news/intels-manufacturing-cost-40-per-chip/

[Lays]

Probably not much, as that article above shows.

 

For sure they make profits, but even if the CPU costs $100 to make and they sell it for $1,000, they also have advertising, sponsorships, R&D and many other things to pay for.  (Making sure I say the second part, so people don't spazz out and say we're getting ripped off and that they're making insane 90% profit margins on the CPU's)

 

[danomicar]

Manufacturing costs are low but all other costs associated with the creation and distribution of extremely fragile products is where the bulk of the cost per unit comes into play. 

 

Like when you pay $60 for a new game, it's not like that money is going towards covering the costs of copying the game onto a CD or your hard drive.

[Aytex]

the real question is how much does a 5960x cost to make

[dragoon20005]

it mostly the same for almost anything "Branded"

 

Beats headphones typically cost 10-18 dollars to make in China

 

but you pay like 200-250 or more for one pair

 

http://brobible.com/gear/article/truth-behind-beats-by-dre-headphones-overpriced-garbage/

 

http://www.techspot.com/news/61060-200-beats-headphones-actually-cost-18-make.html

 

and idiots still buy them

[Suika]

1 minute ago, Aytex said:

the real question is how much does a 5960x cost to make

Probably under a hundred. Pure silicon costs is around $11~ per Haswell-E CPU assuming all chips on the wafer are usable, $4~ for Haswell. Transistors, packaging, and other things boost the cost but likely not significantly enough as far as raw material goes.

[Enderman]

well the sand used to make them is pretty cheap

the billions of dollars of machines that turn the sand into a CPU are not that cheap

[HKZeroFive]

4 minutes ago, dragoon20005 said:

it mostly the same for almost anything "Branded"

 

Beats headphones typically cost 10-18 dollars to make in China

 

but you pay like 200-250 or more for one pair

 

http://brobible.com/gear/article/truth-behind-beats-by-dre-headphones-overpriced-garbage/

 

http://www.techspot.com/news/61060-200-beats-headphones-actually-cost-18-make.html

 

and idiots still buy them

Marques Brownlee had an excellent video on this. Beats invests not much into manufacturing and testing and alot into design and marketing (such as promoting them through celebrities) and thus have established themselves as a well-known brand, unlike other brands such as Audio Technica.

[Benergy]

1 minute ago, HKZeroFive said:

Marques Brownlee had an excellent video on this. Beats invests not much into manufacturing and testing and alot into design and marketing (such as promoting them through celebrities) and thus have established themselves as a well-known brand, unlike other brands such as Audio Technica.

What's more interesting is (from what I've heard) the first generation were really quite bad quality, but they have kept improving since.

 

So it's almost as if they prioritised PR over the actual product, and the profit from that was then used to improve the product.

[byalexandr]

15 minutes ago, Aytex said:

the real question is how much does a 5960x cost to make

The same as all of the other chips.

 

I bet a 980 Ti or Fury X only costs like $100-200 to make.

[HKZeroFive]

5 minutes ago, Benergy said:

What's more interesting is (from what I've heard) the first generation were really quite bad quality, but they have kept improving since.

 

So it's almost as if they prioritised PR over the actual product, and the profit from that was then used to improve the product.

You would think they would try to improve the product with each cycle but they still remain to have poor audio quality in comparison to other products from lesser known brands.

 

Can't blame them, they're profiting a lot from it.