Whats the industry term for...

...when I open up a machine and I see a motherboard that seems to have had a bunch of connectors removed and replaced with little rows of solder dots to fill the holes in the board?

I've always thought of them as "B Stock" boards that failed somewhere in testing and faulty components were removed before the boards were sold off cheap. Is it that simple or are they refurbed that got returned under warranty and then "repaired".

The model numbers are the same as the full boards and a quick glance at an online manual will show that anything up to 50% of the PCI/PCI-X sockets are missing plus parallel connectors, SATA connectors, USB connectors etc, the list goes on.

I am seeing more and more of these boards in clone and branded machines of late and would love to know so that I can better explain it to my clients.

 

They were built that way as it would be way too costly in labour to remove all those parts and the wave soldering process filled those empty holes in automatically. Imagine sitting there with a solder sucker and an iron?:eek We used to build reduced functionality boards like that, but I can't, for the life of me, remember what we used to call them. Maybe someone here is in the business.

 

If they are made this way how can they be given the same product code as a board with all the components?

Is it sub-standard version of the product?

 

Usually they have different model numbers. If the model number is the same (with the same rev. number), yet the boards are different, then something is wrong. Keep in mind that the model numbers will usually be similar.

For example,
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...Subcategory=280&description=&Ntk=&srchInDesc=

However, most of the motherboard manufacturers will sell boards with different levels of functionality that run on the same PCB. Then, the less expensive board with less features (i.e. 4 SATA instead of 6 or 8, 1 IDE instead of 2, with/without integrated video, etc.) will just have solder filling in the holes where the extra connectors would be.

And, a lot of times, the manuals will show pictures of the most expensive board with all of the features so that it can be used for all the models with that PCB. So you may not be able to verify that the board is the same by using the manual.

 

The board that sparked this post is an ASUS PR-DLS533 that's in a clients server and is missing at least 40% of the connectors that the manual shows the board should have, no parallel port, 2 PCI-X slots instead of 4 etc etc.

I have seen similar shortages in other manufacturers boards but only really noticed the difference between the actual product and the image of the board in the manual for the first time on this board.

To me if acording to the manufacturers themselves a PR-DLS533 is supposed to have 4 white PCI-X connectors and one green one as well as a parallel printer port then no parallel port and only 2 white connectors indicates that i some way my board is below the standard for this product.

If I was buying a board and got offered this board for a fraction of the price of the full board it would make sense, and some builders may well feel its an acceptable substitue especially if it improves the bottom line. But surely if it is sub standard that should be written loud and clear somewhere in the same that factory refurbished laptops can only be sold as factory refurbished laptops.