Motherboards are arguably the most important piece of equipment within your computer as everything is connected to it or is built on it. The motherboard a PCB, Printed Circuit Board, and so transfers the electrical signals everywhere. There are different form factors of motherboards, these are:
· ATX – The most commonly used form factor.
· EATX – This is Extended ATX and so will only fit in certain cases that have been built to accommodate the larger board but it allows greater expansion.
· Mini or Micro ATX – These are smaller sized boards that are used in Media PC’s and other PCs that need to be smaller than usual.
· Baby ATX – This is no longer available but was used in legacy IBM machines
Various sizes of motherboard |
The reason the motherboard is so important because of all the components it accommodates, these are:
· CPU slot
o Holds the CPU and heatsink with fan in place
· Chipset
o North and South bridge
o BIOS chip
· Memory Slots
o RAM
§ DDR2 or DDR3
§ The speed of the slot (1000MHz, 1333MHz etc)
o ROM
· Voltage Regulator Module
o This provides the microprocessors with right voltage supply
· Expansion Slots
o AGP
o PCI
o PCI Express
· CMOS battery
· IDE slots
· SATA slots
· Power connectors
o 20-24 pin 12V motherboard power connector
o 12VATX connector for the CPU
o The CPU heatsink fan connector
o Internal audio
o Chassis fan connectors
· Headers
o USB 2.0
o Front panel connectors
o LED light connectors
o eSATA connectors
o Case speaker connector
A motherboard |
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