The standard board, in real numbers
Circuit Boards are the first item that forces an oil line and a metal line to meet. The default recipe unlocked at Tier 5 - Oil Processing is a small Assembler job with a slow output:
| Recipe | Machine | Cycle | Inputs (per craft) | Inputs (per min) | Output |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Circuit Board (standard) | Assembler | 8 s | Copper Sheet 2 + Plastic 4 | 15 Copper Sheet + 30 Plastic | 1 board, 7.5/min |
| Caterium Circuit Board (alternate) | Assembler | 48 s | Plastic 10 + Quickwire 30 | 12.5 Plastic + 37.5 Quickwire | 7 boards, 8.75/min |
| Electrode Circuit Board (alternate) | Assembler | 12 s | Rubber 4 + Petroleum Coke 8 | 20 Rubber + 40 Coke | 1 board, 5/min |
| Silicon Circuit Board (alternate) | Assembler | 24 s | Copper Sheet 11 + Silica 11 | 27.5 Copper Sheet + 27.5 Silica | 5 boards, 12.5/min |
“Circuit Board: 2 Copper Sheet and 4 Plastic per craft, 8 s in an Assembler, 7.5 per minute” — the row mirrored from the satisfactory.wiki.gg recipe table into
src/data/satisfactory-recipes.json.
The number to memorise is 7.5 boards per minute per Assembler. It is slow enough that machine count adds up fast: 60 boards per minute is eight Assemblers, and every one of them wants 15 copper sheet and 30 plastic per minute. The whole line consumes 120 copper sheet and 240 plastic per minute at that scale.
The other number worth memorising is the ratio inside the recipe: two copper sheet and four plastic per board, so plastic demand is exactly double copper sheet demand. That ratio is why circuit board lines are usually plastic-limited — copper sheet is a Tier 2 item you already mass-produce, while plastic depends on an oil base.
Machine counts at every scale
Because the standard output is a clean 7.5/min, the math is simple division. The alternates change both the count and the feed:
| Target boards | Standard Assemblers | Silicon Assemblers | Caterium Assemblers | Electrode Assemblers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30/min | 4 | 3 | 4 | 6 |
| 60/min | 8 | 5 | 7 | 12 |
| 120/min | 16 | 10 | 14 | 24 |
| 240/min | 32 | 20 | 28 | 48 |
Two things jump out. First, Silicon Circuit Board is the fastest per machine at 12.5/min, so it cuts the Assembler count by a third and removes plastic from the recipe entirely. Second, Electrode Circuit Board is the slowest at 5/min and needs twelve machines for the same 60 boards — it exists to convert petroleum coke into boards, not to save space.
Choosing between the four recipes
The real comparison is input cost per board, not output rate:
| Recipe | Copper Sheet per board | Plastic per board | Other input per board |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 2.0 | 4.0 | — |
| Caterium | 0 | 1.43 | 4.29 Quickwire |
| Electrode | 0 | 0 | 4 Rubber + 8 Petroleum Coke |
| Silicon | 2.2 | 0 | 2.2 Silica |
Caterium Circuit Board slashes plastic by roughly 64% per board (4.0 down to 1.43) and drops copper sheet completely. The cost arrives as Quickwire: 4.29 per board, which is 37.5 Quickwire per minute per Assembler. Quickwire is a Constructor recipe — 1 Caterium Ingot becomes 5 Quickwire, 12 ingot per minute becoming 60 wire per minute — so a single Quickwire Constructor covers about 1.6 Caterium board Assemblers. If you already run caterium for AI Limiters or High-Speed Connectors, this is the easiest swap on the list.
Electrode Circuit Board is the petroleum coke route. It uses no plastic and no copper, which makes it the recipe of choice when your oil base is dedicated to fuel and you have coke piling up. Eight coke and four rubber per board is a heavy feed for a 5/min machine, so build it close to the refinery that makes the coke.
Silicon Circuit Board is the throughput option. It keeps copper sheet (2.2 per board, a 10% increase over standard) and swaps plastic for silica at a one-to-one ratio. Because Silica is a cheap Constructor recipe from Raw Quartz, this alternate effectively relocates your board line from the oil base to the quartz node. On a map where oil is contested and quartz is idle, that is a straight win.
If you are still deciding which Hard Drives to spend, the alternate recipe guide explains the unlock dependencies — every board alternate above needs Tier 5 - Oil Processing first, and the Caterium and Silicon versions also need their MAM research completed.
Where the boards go
Circuit Boards feed almost every electronic item in the game. The cached consumption table gives the per-minute draws:
| Consumer | Boards per min | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Computer (standard) | 10 | 4 per craft, 2.5 computers/min |
| Adaptive Control Unit | 5 | 5 per craft, 1/min |
| High-Speed Connector | 3.75 | 3 per craft |
| Caterium Computer (alternate) | 15 | 4 per craft, 3.75 computers/min |
| Radio Control System (alternate) | 15 | 10 per craft, 4.5 units/min |
| Crystal Computer (alternate) | 5 | 3 per craft, 3.33 computers/min |
| Silicon High-Speed Connector (alternate) | 3 | 3 per craft |
The Computer line dominates. One standard Computer Manufacturer at 2.5/min takes 10 boards per minute, so a comfortable electronics block is one Computer Manufacturer fed by two board Assemblers (15/min, 5/min of headroom for a buffer). Scale to four Computers per minute and you need 16 boards per minute, which is three Assemblers at 7.5/min with a little spill.
The Adaptive Control Unit is the other big consumer, at 5 boards per minute per Manufacturer running the standard recipe — see the Adaptive Control Unit chain for how that machine also demands Automated Wiring, Heavy Modular Frames and Computers at the same time. Boards are the cheapest of its four inputs, which is exactly why players under-build them.
Practical layout for a board block
- Build the plastic feed first. 30 plastic per minute per Assembler is one and a half standard Refineries, so a 60/min board block needs twelve refineries on plastic before the first board ships.
- Do not split plastic three ways with basic splitters. Each Assembler needs a steady 30/min; a manifold that starves the last machine drops the whole block to the throughput of its weakest member. Use a balanced splitter arrangement.
- Leave room for a second row. Board demand roughly doubles when Computers unlock, and a block built against a wall cannot grow. The 120/min row in the table above is 16 Assemblers — plan the footprint now.
- Sink the overflow deliberately. Boards are worth 696 points each at the AWESOME Sink, which is high enough that a temporary overflow sink is a reasonable way to keep the line running while you build the next consumer.