Custom hardware manufacturer

[DMStone]

Hi guys right now i am working on my product ( a fully upgradeable all in one ) its still in concept stages i am starting my research and want to know if any one of you guys know about any brand that can build custom motherboard and a brand that cam supply touchscreen panels ( preferably hdr ) and some custom graphics cards ( something  like sxm2 ) so i cam make the graphics card also upgradeable ???

[Ezzy-525]

@DMStone I don't know any personally, but if you're ok with the parts being made and assembled in China. Maybe hit up Scotty from Strange Parts on Twitter?

 

https://twitter.com/strangepartscom?lang=en 

[mariushm]

This is kinda your job, the research and all that.. but I can tell you straight away that it's gonna be expensive. Would probably be better to base your design on existing form factors and existing retail hardware.

 

Any serious motherboard manufacturer will probably not even look at you unless you place an order of at least 1000pcs ... though if you want them to also make the board layout for you, it's probably gonna be in the tens of thousands at very least.

Making a custom motherboard layout, all the traces layout, etc isn't cheap, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars in man hours alone, then validations, testing, custom bios making etc etc. Customizing an existing motherboard model may be cheaper, depends on ODM company

I'd start looking at companies that produce laptops for various companies like Quanta , Compal, Foxconn , Wistrom ... you can also check companies like ECS, maybe Acer and smaller Chinese makers which may tweak some of their existing designs ... MSI also sometimes makes small changes to some of their designs and rebrands their boards...

 

Touchscreen panels ... again, do your research. See major panel manufacturers, LG, Samsung, InnoLux / Chimmei or whatever their name is now, AU optronics

 

As for video cards... please just stop reinventing the wheel...reuse something existing. either go with mxm graphics cards (though i think nvidia wants to abandon it) or go with something like pci-e risers or whatever... use a flat flex cable to connect a video card to your board without having to restrict board into a particular form factor.

[Syntaxvgm]

28 minutes ago, DMStone said:

Hi guys right now i am working on my product ( a fully upgradeable all in one ) its still in concept stages i am starting my research and want to know if any one of you guys know about any brand that can build custom motherboard and a brand that cam supply touchscreen panels ( preferably hdr ) and some custom graphics cards ( something  like sxm2 ) so i cam make the graphics card also upgradeable ???

you need to find the panel you want manually, and find a supplier that can make screen controllers for it and load the right firmware. For a GPU, what you want is MXM, which is the gaming laptop replaceable ones. IMO there's really nothing you can do to keep this under a huge minimum order unless you go itx with a small pcie gpu. 

[DMStone]

10 minutes ago, Syntaxvgm said:

you need to find the panel you want manually, and find a supplier that can make screen controllers for it and load the right firmware. For a GPU, what you want is MXM, which is the gaming laptop replaceable ones. IMO there's really nothing you can do to keep this under a huge minimum order unless you go itx with a small pcie gpu. 

I think mxm is a great option but its bery limited with power consumption so it wont be able to give a similar performance when compared to its pc counter part amd mxm is pretty much abandoned 

[Syntaxvgm]

3 minutes ago, DMStone said:

I think mxm is a great option but its bery limited with power consumption so it wont be able to give a similar performance when compared to its pc counter part amd mxm is pretty much abandoned 

mxm is far from abandoned! Lol. You're looking at MXM 3a. MXM 3b is alive and well. You can get MXM 3b 1080s easy on ebay 

MXM is basically just pin for pin PCIe 

[Canada EH]

46 minutes ago, DMStone said:

custom motherboard

You'd have to contact China suppliers and see, what a muddy water that in terms of the amount of good suppliers vs not good.

[DMStone]

24 minutes ago, mariushm said:

This is kinda your job, the research and all that.. but I can tell you straight away that it's gonna be expensive. Would probably be better to base your design on existing form factors and existing retail hardware.

 

Any serious motherboard manufacturer will probably not even look at you unless you place an order of at least 1000pcs ... though if you want them to also make the board layout for you, it's probably gonna be in the tens of thousands at very least.

Making a custom motherboard layout, all the traces layout, etc isn't cheap, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars in man hours alone, then validations, testing, custom bios making etc etc. Customizing an existing motherboard model may be cheaper, depends on ODM company

I'd start looking at companies that produce laptops for various companies like Quanta , Compal, Foxconn , Wistrom ... you can also check companies like ECS, maybe Acer and smaller Chinese makers which may tweak some of their existing designs ... MSI also sometimes makes small changes to some of their designs and rebrands their boards...

 

Touchscreen panels ... again, do your research. See major panel manufacturers, LG, Samsung, InnoLux / Chimmei or whatever their name is now, AU optronics

 

As for video cards... please just stop reinventing the wheel...reuse something existing. either go with mxm graphics cards (though i think nvidia wants to abandon it) or go with something like pci-e risers or whatever... use a flat flex cable to connect a video card to your board without having to restrict board into a particular form 

Thats a valid point the volume will depend on how the indiegogo campain goes which is i am planing to do and i liked your idea for the graphics a smaller pcb will do it for me something like zotac makes with its nano series 

[mariushm]

Research everything before you make the campaign, get quotes, get everything... add 10-15% to that before you even think of adding some percentage as profit.

Account for indiegogo's fees , be careful about how whatever money you get eventually would be taxed or not...

Account for shipping costs to donors , account for maybe 1% in broken devices/returns/etc when sending final product to donors, price changes between campain end and receiving parts etc etc

Right now there's some huge shortages on some components used in computer parts... it's not uncommon to wait 3-4 months to get an order for some electronic parts fulfilled (that's why i said it's better to use retail parts when possible instead of custom boards)

if you're in US, be careful with the new taxes on electronic imports from china, afaik taxes will go up or change until the end of this year... 

 

 

[DMStone]

14 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Research everything before you make the campaign, get quotes, get everything... add 10-15% to that before you even think of adding some percentage as profit.

Account for indiegogo's fees , be careful about how whatever money you get eventually would be taxed or not...

Account for shipping costs to donors , account for maybe 1% in broken devices/returns/etc when sending final product to donors, price changes between campain end and receiving parts etc etc

Right now there's some huge shortages on some components used in computer parts... it's not uncommon to wait 3-4 months to get an order for some electronic parts fulfilled (that's why i said it's better to use retail parts when possible instead of custom boards)

if you're in US, be careful with the new taxes on electronic imports from china, afaik taxes will go up or change until the end of this year... 

 

 

Ok i will research  about this 

[Amazonsucks]

https://www.maingear.com/custom/desktops/alpha-34/

 

Something like that?

[Madgemade]

If you design the PCB and everything yourself you can get small numbers of PCB built but you would have to add all the components yourself. The knowledge required for this is pretty extreme which is why nobody is doing this. There a some hobbyists who do it with 8 bit and 16 bit computers but not much for 32 bit and I've not seen any custom home built modern motherboards anywhere. It's a few big OEM companies doing most of the motherboard manufacturing in China. The design is the hard part for something as complex as a motherboard, one PCB trace that's too long and everything will be out of sync and broken, it takes a ton of skill and is very expensive to go from prototype to working product. If you get a big order then it's possible but I don't think it will be easy at all and that's why you don't see many people doing this sort of thing.

 

I have though about this sort of thing myself, to make some vintage compatible motherboards for retro gaming. But it's just so much work to learn the electronic engineering skills needed to even understand what to do that I gave up.

[Lord Nicoll]

1 hour ago, DMStone said:

Hi guys right now i am working on my product ( a fully upgradeable all in one ) its still in concept stages i am starting my research and want to know if any one of you guys know about any brand that can build custom motherboard and a brand that cam supply touchscreen panels ( preferably hdr ) and some custom graphics cards ( something  like sxm2 ) so i cam make the graphics card also upgradeable ???

That's all very very very very exprensive, spin costs on that'd be about $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 as you want to basically make a new standard that doesn't exist anymore. Do the sensible thing and make a bare bones AIO with a screen and cooler, with  custom PSU (or SFX), that takes normal mini ITX boards and uses a PCIe riser/extender for GPU support, it's been done before like that but there is always room for another player if they do something different or special. 

[DMStone]

45 minutes ago, Amazonsucks said:

https://www.maingear.com/custom/desktops/alpha-34/

 

Something like that?

Its a bit like the surface but not specifically built for artist and with more power though it wont have that good looks

[DMStone]

1 hour ago, Lord Nicoll said:

That's all very very very very exprensive, spin costs on that'd be about $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 as you want to basically make a new standard that doesn't exist anymore. Do the sensible thing and make a bare bones AIO with a screen and cooler, with  custom PSU (or SFX), that takes normal mini ITX boards and uses a PCIe riser/extender for GPU support, it's been done before like that but there is always room for another player if they do something different or special. 

If you are talking about the the graphics card then i will say that it still used by nvidia in the server market and most of the brands dont take that much money to manufactur mother boards the motherboard could be manufactured in way lesser of a cost

[DMStone]

And one thing i need to ask what will you guys prefer front I/O or rear I/O PANNEL ???

[mariushm]

You should already know the answer to such questions by this stage.

 

my answer is depends on device, specs, screen res, target market, if it's meant to be water proof/resistant or ruggedized , if it's for gaming or more prosumer (high hz refresh, crappier color reproduction vs ips, high dpi, factory calibration ) etc etc etc

 

There's also side connectors, nothing in front or back .. if it's something that could be used as tablet you could want at the bottom so that if it rains on screen or something water won't go inside connectors on the front etc etc 

[Lord Nicoll]

2 hours ago, DMStone said:

If you are talking about the the graphics card then i will say that it still used by nvidia in the server market and most of the brands dont take that much money to manufactur mother boards the motherboard could be manufactured in way lesser of a cost

sure it's still used a bit in server, but they don't make then in GeForce cards, and AMD doesn't really either, and good luck applying to be a partner for either company, Nvidia moved away from MXM and those kinds of standards so they likely won't even sell to you. Best to use retail available parts and find clever solutions to the issues that causes. 

[DMStone]

12 hours ago, mariushm said:

You should already know the answer to such questions by this stage.

 

my answer is depends on device, specs, screen res, target market, if it's meant to be water proof/resistant or ruggedized , if it's for gaming or more prosumer (high hz refresh, crappier color reproduction vs ips, high dpi, factory calibration ) etc etc etc

 

There's also side connectors, nothing in front or back .. if it's something that could be used as tablet you could want at the bottom so that if it rains on screen or something water won't go inside connectors on the front etc 

I have my own preferences but still wanted to know what you guys prefer because i am still in the concept stages so the design can still change a bit