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MOTHER BOARD
The motherboard is the main circuit board inside your PC. Every components at some point communicates through the motherboard, either by directly plugging into it or by communicating through one of the motherboards ports. The motherboard is one big communication highway. Its purpose inside your PC is to provide a platform for all the other components and peripherals to talk to each other.
Types of Motherboards
The type of motherboards depends on the CPU it was designed for. You can therefore categories motherboards by which socket type they have. e.g. Socket A, Socket 478 etc. The Type of motherboard you buy is very important, as it will need to house your CPU, and they are not interchangeable. When buying a motherboard, it will always tell you what socket type it has
Speed of a Motherboard
Motherboards have got to be one of the hardest components to measure the speed of. Performance can really only be measured by benchmarking using the same components in several motherboards of the same type. You often find that motherboards with the same chipset have roughly the same performance in real world tests. The minor differences that do occur are down to the quality of the materials used and the quality of the manufacturing.
The Motherboards speeds that are quoted on the box are maximum supported speeds for other components. For example motherboards will quote the maximum FSB (Front Side Bus) speed. However without a CPU that also supports this speed, it will never be reached. Likewise when it quotes the maximum memory speed. The memory of this speed has to be present
What are the Parts of a Motherboard?
So now the question is what are the standard computer motherboard parts that are present in the machines in use today. Knowing the basics of these parts will help you solve many computer motherboard problems that may arise from time to time, and also if you have to build a computer. The layout and the manner in which the computer motherboard parts are placed is known as the form factor. The shape of the case of the computer is also decided by the form factor. To standardize the manner in which computers are assembled across the world, there are certain fixed models for deciding the form factor. Given below is a list that will throw light on what all functions the parts of a motherboard performs.
Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slot
Normally, the number of PCI slots on the motherboard could be anywhere between 1 and 6. The peripherals like graphics cards, sound cards, ethernet cards, modems and DVD recorders are attached here, and the slots are 32 bit slots.
Central Processing Unit (CPU) socket
This socket is the home for your computer's processor. There are 2 types of sockets that are commonly used by the major processors (Intel and AMD), these are Pin Grid Array (PGA) and the Land Grid Array (LGA).
Motherboard Battery Compartment
When you shut your system down, your data is stored in a battery on the motherboard. This computer motherboard battery is placed inside the battery compartment that is present on the surface of your motherboard.
RAM slots (DIMM and SIMM)
These are the slots that hold the RAM chips of your computer. They are usually of two types - DIMM (Double Inline Memory Module) and SIMM (Single Inline Memory Module). Memory chips of different sizes can be attached here.
Power Connector
The motherboard requires the power to function properly and this power supply comes from the main power connector. There are usually two main types of connectors - 20 + 4 pins (when there are two connectors on the same motherboard), and the 24 pins.
Apart from these computer motherboard components, the following are computer motherboard parts that have specific purposes for connecting to hardware devices. These connectors show up on the back panel of the computer, once the entire machine is assembled and mounted.
PS/2 Connectors
Every motherboard contains two PS/2 connectors, one for the keyboard and one for the mouse.
USB (Universal Serial Bus) Port
There are many of these ports across the back panel. They are used for connecting external devices like USB flash drives, external hard disks, ipods, mp3 players and cameras.
Game Port
This port is mostly used to connect the devices that are used for gaming purposes, like joysticks.
Display Connector
This port is used to connect the computer monitor of the machine to the back panel.
Sound Card Connector
Your sound devices like headphones and mics are connected here.
This computer motherboard information should illuminate the many purposes of the various computer motherboard parts that are standard requirement for every computer to function properly.