Kingston Factory Tour (Hsinchu, Taiwan)

QA Labs

Once fully assembled and SPD programmed, the memory modules are then brougth to the Quality Assurance (QA) Labs to see whether they actually work as intended. Our guide told us that Kingston tests an astonishing 120,000 modules per day in this facility, and that the defect rate is a miniscule 0.4%, with most defects being fixable.

Although not visible, this floor also contains a hot room where the memory modules are tested in environmental temperatures of up to 65°C.


At best guess there are probably 1,000 systems set up in this room just for the stress-testing memory modules. It's a simple process really, the SO-DIMM modules are installed into special adapters and mounted onto a open-air system comprised of a regular desktop motherboard and regular off-the-shelf components. A proprietary Memtest-like utility would then run for approximately 14 minutes (on 2GB modules) and display a PASS or FAIL warning on the LCD displays. As mentioned above, the fail rate is a tiny 0.4% and I don't see any failures while I was there.


Although testing on open-air systems is obviously the easiest solution, Kingston had a 100 or so notebooks from various manufacturers, where the SO-DIMMs were being stress tested in their 'natural environment'.


Modules that fail are examined my Kingston technicians who then attempt to repair any cosmetic defects with a little touch-up work. Once the touch-up is completed, the modules are run through the stress-testing gauntlet once again to see if they will pass.

The modules that passed the first time around and ready to be packaged & shipped.