MOTHERBOARD
A motherboard is the central printed circuit board (PCB) in some complex electronic systems, such as modern personal computers. The motherboard is sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, or, on Apple computers, the logic board. It is also sometimes casually shortened to mobo.
The motherboard is the main circuit board inside the PC. It holds the CPU and memory, provides expansion slots for peripherals, and, whether directly or indirectly, connects to every part of the PC. The essential motherboard make-up includes the chipset (known as the "glue logic"), some code in ROM and the various wired interconnections between the components know as buses. |
The chipset is fundamental, and controls how the motherboard interacts with everything else in the system. A good chipset can be more important than the power of CPU or the amount of RAM. The ROM code includes the BIOS, which has user-changeable options for how the motherboard operates with integral and connected devices. The buses are the electrical wires that connect everything together.
Motherboard designs use many different buses to link their various components. For instance, wide, high-speed buses are difficult and expensive to produce. |
The signals travel at such a rate that even distances of just a few centimetres cause timing problems, while the metal tracks on the circuit board act as miniature radio antennae, transmitting electromagnetic noise that introduces interference with signals elsewhere in the system. For these reasons, design engineers try to keep the fastest buses confined to the smallest area of the motherboard and use slower, more robust buses for other parts.
In this section, the following pages focus on basic motherboard functionality and layout. You can find more information elsewhere on the site, including:
Interfaces
Chipsets
However, the motherboard is perhaps the most fascinating and certainly most integral component of the PC. Every PC's multimedia graphic and sound capabilities, type and performance of CPU and support for type and capacity of RAM are governed by their motherboards. On the next page, we'll look at how this powerful component evolved.
In this section, the following pages focus on basic motherboard functionality and layout. You can find more information elsewhere on the site, including:
Interfaces
Chipsets
However, the motherboard is perhaps the most fascinating and certainly most integral component of the PC. Every PC's multimedia graphic and sound capabilities, type and performance of CPU and support for type and capacity of RAM are governed by their motherboards. On the next page, we'll look at how this powerful component evolved.
How the Motherboard works
If you've ever taken the case off of a computer, you've seen the one piece of equipment that ties everything together -- the motherboard. A motherboard allows all the parts of your computer to receive power and communicate with one another.
More on Computers Microprocessors How RAM Works TreeHugger.com: Intel's New Nehalem CPU Motherboards have come a long way in the last twenty years. The first motherboards held very few actual components. The first IBM PC motherboard had only a processor and card slots. Users plugged components like floppy drive controllers and memory into the slots. Today, motherboards typically boast a wide variety of built-in features, and they directly affect a computer's capabilities and potential for upgrades. In this article, we'll look at the general components of a motherboard. Then, we'll closely examine five points that dramatically affect what a computer can do. |
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Computer motherboard designs are constantly changing. Listed below are the major components of the motherboard:
BIOS: Another important component is the basic input/output system (BIOS) chip which contains startup programs such as the power on/self-test (POST) and drivers of the computer. This chip controls communication between the systems hardware and operating system. BIOS can also be referred to as firmware. Expansion Slots: Expansion slots enable the CPU to communicate with the peripheral devices which expand the capability of the computer. Different cards can be plugged into these slots to enhance the computer such as video cards to improve graphics and sound cards to provide better audio. Battery: This battery is referred to as CMOS battery and is responsible for keeping the time and date. It usually has a life span of about 3 to 4 years. Memory: In a computer system, the CPU needs information and instructions to perform properly. This information and instructions for the CPU are stored in Random Access Memory (RAM). This memory is sometimes referred to as Primary Memory or Main Memory. Ports: Ports allow external devices to be connected to the computer motherboard. There are different types of ports located on the motherboard such as parallel, serial, universal serial bus (USB) and SCSI (small computer system interface). Until up to a few years ago, printers were connected to parallel ports but now they are being replaced with the faster USB port. Low speed peripherals such as modems, mice and some scanners were connected to the serial port. Again, this port is being replaced by the USB port which can support up to 127 devices. The SCSI bus can also support a number of peripherals such as hard disks, tape drives, CD-ROM drives, scanners, etc. Power Connector: This is a 20-pin male connector located on the computer motherboard. The power supply is plugged into this connector which supplies power for the motherboard, its components and some peripherals. Most new motherboards now come with a 24-pin connector. Older motherboards with 20-pin connectors can still be used with a 24-pin power supply since this 24-pin connector can be separated into 20-pin and 4-pin connectors. Integrated Graphics and Audio: Today, most of the motherboards manufactured include integrated graphics, audio and LAN. Hard Drive Data Transfer Modes-(Interface): Motherboards are designed to provide different data transfer rates. First time computers used the UDMA/33 interface but this was increased to UDMA/66 which doubled the data-transfer rate. The data transfer rate of a hard drive is the time used to read/write information. This interface mode was upgraded to UDMA/100 and then finally to UDMA/133. These characteristics apply to Parallel ATA hard drives. For a long time, the UDMA/133 remained the fastest interface until the inception of the Serial ATA drive which has a data transfer rate of 150MBS/sec. These have now improved to data transfer rates of 300MBS/sec. These hard drives can be operated in different modes called RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks). RAID requires more than one hard drive. This provides speed by writing/reading information to more than one drive simultaneously - called 'striping' (RAID, 0). Another feature is data security or 'mirroring' which duplicates data on both hard drives (RAID, 1). Conclusion: A computer motherboard allows the different components of your computer system to interact with each other. It must support your choice of CPU. Your selection of a motherboard must also be dependent on the computer system that you choose. |
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