They really aren't making any margins, in fact they're almost certainly losing money. It's just about mitigating loss. Right now they have a bunch of stuff with somewhat unknown value (the chips themselves, IP) and some stuff with a known value that's difficult to recover (coolers, fans, cases, long leadtime PSU parts, etc). If (example only, I don't know the numbers so don't take this as a real value) you've paid $200 per kit of stuff and can spend another $150 in order to sell it for $260, you've essentially turned $200 in parts into $110. Yeah you lose money, but it's better than liquidating them for pennies or letting them sit on the shelf for another 6 months.
I get what you are saying with the fans and watercooling stuff. They do have chips and want to use us to make 2000 boards with there chips. So they gotta be making something in there. Nobody is gonna just give chips away. Yeah the price may be slashed, just to get some value, but I doubt HF would get all these boards built if there is not something in there for HF.
I know you have a rough estimate of what these boards cost to get made.
