DeepCool Factory Tour 2024

Peter Donnell / 7 months ago

DeepCool is the biggest manufacturer for PC cases and coolers in China, and that’s saying something given how many amazing brands operate out of China! We’ve heard some pretty amazing things about the relatively new factory, so when they invited us to come and check it out, well, we just had to say yes. The factory is located in Huizhou a short drive from Shenzhen in the South of China, with their Headquarters located in Beijing in the North.

They guided us through this truly massive building, well, collection of buildings, with building A, B, C, D, and E making up the factory floors and 20-something floors of office space, residential and recreational areas that make up the main tower of their operation.

We started with a lunch on the 22nd floor, from which you can oversee the just how vast the factory is, with the main assembly buildings consisting of four floors each, it really was eye opening, given that we’ve also visited the second biggest factory for PC coolers in China, and their building was barely big enough to fill one of the DeepCool buildings (no offense to the second biggest, of course).

For the tour, the factory was quite loud, so we tuned into our guide with these handy little ear pieces.

The first thing we noticed was space, the factory may be big, but without spoiling everything ahead, it felt half full at best, with DeepCool already being huge, they know they’re going to grow, and you can’t go building a new factory every time you need to put a new line into production.

One of the first parts of the the production run we saw was heat pipes, with advanced machines pumping out thousands of them using complex automated processes.

And we really do mean thousands per day, with these all later being used for everything from air coolers to radiators.

After being made, they’re filled with a powder ready to be put into the oven to create a thermal layer on the interior of the pipe.

They’re stacked into graphite holders and sent deep into a very long oven for around 17 hours, toasty!

One end of the pipe is then fed into an automated arc welder, sealing up one end of the pipe.

And again, there’s a lot of them being pumped through these machines!

What amazed me is the level of quality assurance, at each stage and between, with the machines binning faulty units (surprisingly no more than a handful for every many thousands). Then they’re all pressure tested to high precision in these machines.

Again, any failures would be binned, but after watching for a while, it seemed like they rarely have any issues, but they do not skimp on QA at all here.

Once they quality is checked, they’re fed into bending machines, putting each heat pipes to the required shape for which ever production run they’re doing; multiple machines do this for multiple lines at the same time.

The first indication of the product, seems to be an air cooler so far.

Some further tooling is done by hand, as well as soldering, drilling, and more QA where required.

Andy stayed in this zone for 10 minutes and aged another 20 years… silly Andy.

Further assembly machines, for installing heat pipes and construction of radiator units.

You can see the raw unpolished radiator units here, ready to be pre-filled.

Hence the little bits of over spray on the filling blocks here.

And more brutal testing and baking as they work their way down the production line.

The next step is prepping for paint, which starts with these incredible automated sanding machines, which aggressively sand then polish all the flat surfaces of the radiators.

Resulting in a very smooth final product.

The work is checked by hand at the end, with any minor flaws resolved, or failed items sent to be recycled.

Then we get onto the absolutely gargantuan painting area, where each item is hung onto a monorail system to go into the paining chain.

Honestly, it’s staggering, there are absolutely thousands of radiators going around in the air on these rails for what seems to a be thousands of meters of track.

They pass down long corridors between machines to each step of the process.

As they pass through these huge machines, they’re slowly powder coated to produce a premium quality paint job on each radiator.

Honestly, the whole setup looks pretty fun to ride on, albeit, not really safe for humans.

Obviously we can’t get too close to the paint nozzles for safety reasons, but there are loads of them to ensure an even coating over the whole radiator.

You can see new ones going in on the left, and coming back down the line painted black on the right after leaving the massive and very toasty ovens.

And then again, more quality checks as they get ready for the next stage of assembly.

Components for their vast range of products are stockpiled and ready to go to further assembly, with vast storage areas present in all the main factory buildings.

For cases, it’s pretty much the same process, with various components being stamped out, drilled, cut, etc, sent to paint, and then onto the final assembly lines

They go around a conveyer belt, with dozens of people each having a specific task. Starting with a component each to be riveted to screwed into place before moving onto the next person.

By the time the case has done a full lap, it’s had brackets, fans, cables, cable management, and more all put into place.

With some sections reaching to product line partly assembled from other teams, to speed up the overall final assembly.

Ending up being boxed up at the end of the line and ready to ship to customers.

As we move through the buildings, you see a similar process for air coolers, with massive pressing machines stamping out huge numbers of cooling fins, installation brackets, and mounts. Of course, this includes the heat pipes being added to the mix, which were produced earlier in the tour.

At this point, the air coolers are starting to take shape.

Further machines adding required drilling to the process, or in this case, milling down the heat pipes for a CPU contact surface.

Some of the more intense and complex manufacturing is heavily automated. With robotic arms taking a pieces of metal at one end, into a machine for shaping or cutting, and further arms passing it to the next machine, and the next, and so on, it’s like watching someone play Factorio in real life!

Parts are inspected and cleaned further down the line, ready to go to assembly.

For plastic components, we moved to yet another factory floor, with huge sacks of various materials at the ready to feed the vast number of machines.

These materials are then cooked in these huge machines and then fid by a labyrinth of pipes to the machines in the next room.

These machines then press and pump out things like brackets, fan blades, fan housing, AIO covers and much more.

Which then work their way through these conveyers to have further assembly done.

Components like coolers, fans and other components are then installed into test rigs to ensure their quality and performance meets expectations, we didn’t see any fail, but that doesn’t mean they just skip the testing, they’re very meticulous about their testing here.

Once ready, the products can be sent to the next stage, and I said… there are… a LOT of them made each day here. This is just some of the assembled air coolers,

They can then put put through multiple bathing stages, allowing them to add chrome, copper or other plating finishes to the products, giving them that stunning premium quality finish we know and love.

They’re then cooked again to dry off the products ready to be stacked up for the next stage.

DeepCool does everything in house, and that includes the production of their own motors and electrical components. We saw dozens of winding machines taking copper spool and creating the motors of various specification, from cheaper 3-pole, to their new flagship motors for their latest AIO pumps and fans. Honestly, at this point we were all simply staggered at the size, complexity and quality of their operation… and our feet were hurting, this whole tour took four hours of walking and there’s still many things we didn’t see, as their processes are broadly similar to those that we did see.

The speed and precision of these machines is amazing to watch as they wind the coils, constantly under visual inspection, much like the rest of the factory.

Their flagship 12-coil motors were a smaller production run, done by a much more expensive and more precise machine.

Some staff were working in anechoic booths, sheltered from the noise of the factory, allowing them to inspect the dBa performance of fans and other components.

And again, this resulted in vast amounts of hardware ready to go onto the next stage of assembly.

Their liquid coolers need a lot more work than the fans though, and coolers are all mounted to these massive shelving units, ready to be filled, tested, and tested a lot more again.

They’re machine filled, but otherwise loaded onto these machines by hand, and pressure tested to ensure there are no leaks. They then spend a few hours at high temperature in an oven to ensure they can withstand years of hard work in your computer, and the motors and fans are running the whole time to ensure they meet spec.

Finished coolers are then put on the conveyer belt, and carefully boxed up ready to ship to customers.

It’s truly amazing to see this factory, the size is bewildering, but the fact they have the largest operation and still so much more room to expand and grow is impressive. It’s also the cleanest and brightest factory I’ve been in to date. The staff all looked well looked after, with many having residences on site, an amazing cafeteria where the staff are well looked after and can get good meals, lots of free space, there’s sports areas, gyms and more all on site, and not just for show, we saw plenty of staff enjoying the extensive facilities here.

Beyond that, it’s no wonder DeepCool continue to dominate the market, their quality is second to none. I also want to take this opportunity to thank them for some once in a lifetime experiences as they showed us many of the most iconic sights of China and their informative tour guide who taught us the extensive local histories.

The Great Wall of China!