Not quite — crafting circuit boards doesn't automatically do anything to the Research Desk. "Install Circuit Board" is a one-time action that shows up in your Actions tab once you hit Tier 5 (Electronics). It costs 4 Circuits and permanently upgrades the Research Desk from 0.2 research/s per level to 0.3/s — so you do need to craft the circuits first, but then you actively trigger the upgrade yourself.
If you're at Tier 5 and have 4 Circuits in stock, check the Actions tab — it should be there. If it's not showing, that would be a bug worth knowing about.