System Hardware Component: Motherboard
System Hardware refers to the physical components from which a system is made. Most computer components are modular. This means that they can be removed and replaced by another piece of hardware that does the same thing. If a component is modular and can be replaced, then it can be also called a field replaceable unit (FRU).
There are three main basic components in the computer system which runs the whole system and they are Motherboard, Processor and the Memory.
I will explain the motherboard and all its subparts in detail in this blog and the Processors and the Memory in the coming blogs. So now have a look on Motherboard in the figure below.
Motherboards
The Motherboard is one of the basic and fundamental component of any computer system. It connects all the other components through different pathways or connections and it acts as a nervous system of the computer. It can be also called system board or main board.
Motherboard is basically a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) on which all other components are attached integratedly or physically through the wires and cables. Nowadays fully integrated motherboards are available in the market.
The motherboard itself is a combinations of different components and some of the basic components of the motherboard are following
- Form factors
- Chipsets
- Processor sockets
- Memory slots
- Expansion slots
- Disk Connectors
- Power connectors
- BIOS/firmware
- CMOS and CMOS battery
- Back-panel connectors
- Front-panel connectors
The following figure shows the motherboard with its parts highlighted.
Form Factor
The design classifications of the motherboard is called a form factor. The design classifications are basically the sizes and shapes (aka Dimensions) of the motherboard. There are huge number of form factors available today and only a motherboard having a specific form factor can be mounted on the respective system’s case/body. The common form factors used nowadays are following
- ATX (Advanced Technology Extended)
- Micro ATX
- ITX (Information Technology Extended
ITX is a collection of SFF (Small form factor) boards. Baby AT was designed and made by the IBM and ATX is made by Intel.
Chipsets
The chipset of the motherboard is a collection of chips and circuits that perform interface and peripheral functions for the processor. This collection of chips provides interfaces for memory, expansion cards, and on-board peripherals and generally prescribes how a motherboard will communicate with the installed peripherals.
Chipsets are usually given a name and model number by the original manufacturer like Intel’s X79.
There are further two kinds of functional groups in chipsets, the first is Northbridge and the second is Southbridge .
The Northbridge provides communication between the high speed components like Processor and memory or integrated video while the Southbridge provides the communication between the slower peripherals like PS/2, parallel ports and serial ports etc.
Processor Sockets
CPU sockets or slots are used to handle or fix the processor in motherboard. There are different sizes of the processor sockets depending upon the processor. Sockets are basically flat and have several columns and rows of holes or pins arranged in a square. There are further two types of sockets, one is pin grid array (PGA) and the other is land grid array (LGA). PGA sockets have holes, and the processors have pins that fit into the holes. LGA sockets have contacts or pins which connect with contacts on the CPU. Mainly LGA sockets are mainly used today because there is a less chance of damaging of the processor because the pins are built in the sockets not in the processor.
Memory Slots
Memory slots are used for holding memory chips that make up primary memory that is used to store currently used data and instructions for the CPU and that primary memory is also called RAM (Random Access Memory). Memory for desktops comes on circuit boards called dual inline memory modules (DIMMs) and for laptops on small outline DIMMs (SODIMMs).
Memory slots are long and slender type and generally close to the CPU socket. They are available in different colors and mostly in white color.
Expansion Slots
Expansion slots are used to install various devices in the computer to expand its capabilities and performance. Some expansion devices that can be installed in these slots include video card, network card, sound card, and disk interface cards.
The expansion slots have further three types which are using today and that slots are:
- PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slots are usually 32 bits slots, 3 inches long that are mostly in white color.
- AGP (Accelerated Graphic Port) slots are used for handling the video graphics card and they are mostly in brown color and they are slightly shorter than the PCI slots.
- PCIe ( Peripheral Component Interconnect Expense) slots are the modern and usually faster than PCI and AGP and are mostly used today. These are found in different sizes.
The following figure shows the different expansion slots and notice their color and sizes.
Disk Connectors
Motherboards have Disk Connectors that are used for connecting the hard drive which is permanent storing device. There are a few different kinds of hard drive connectors available today. One is Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) connector or Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (PATA) which is older one. The other one is Serial ATA (SATA) which is newer and much faster than PATA.
PATA has large number of pins while SATA doesn’t have any pin.
Power Connectors
Motherboard require electricity for functioning and it has a special 24-pin block connector that allows the motherboard to be connected to the power supply to receive power. This connector is where the ATX power adapter plugs in.
BIOS/Firmware
Firmware is a kind of software that is encoded in hardware like ROM (Read only memory), and can be run without extra instructions from the operating system. BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is the one of the best example of firmware in a computer which is burned into a flash memory chip located on the motherboard. The BIOS chip is the second most important chip in the computer after the CPU and this chip contains the BIOS system software that boots the system and initiates the memory and hard drive to allow the operating system to start. BIOS chip can be recognized as it have on it the name of the manufacturer and usually the word BIOS as shown in the figure below with the manufacturer name AMI.
CMOS and CMOS Battery
The CMOS stands for complementary metal oxide semiconductor and it is a special kind of chip technology used to store the basic information like date and time, hard drive configuration, memory and CPU settings, boot sequence, and power management features when the system is on or turned off. We can say that the chip is made through the CMOS technology and it has the BIOS settings saved on it.
The CMOS chip have a battery which is integrated near the chip on the motherboard and it is used to supply power continuously to the CMOS chip so that the BIOS settings are permanently stored.
Normally, the CMOS battery is included next to the BIOS chip as shown in the figure below.
Back-Panel Connectors
There are different types of connectors attached on the back of the motherboard which include power connector, video connector, audio connector, a keyboard and mouse connectors, networking like Ethernet connector, and sometimes USB connectors.
Front-Panel Connectors
There can also be different types of connectors attached on the front of the motherboard which include Power Button, Restart button, Audio ports for Microphone, headphones and speakers, and USB ports etc.
This was all about Motherboard and its subparts.
Thanks for Reading…!!!
