Motherboards
The motherboard is the heart and soul of the computer. Without it, you wouldn't have anywhere to connect your components. That's not to say that the other components aren't useful, but they're covered on other pages.
The motherboard is made of a single silicon board, and has hundreds of built in wires and connections that can be seen if you look closely enough.
Below is a numbered motherboard (an ASRock G41M-GS).
The motherboard is made of a single silicon board, and has hundreds of built in wires and connections that can be seen if you look closely enough.
Below is a numbered motherboard (an ASRock G41M-GS).
1. This is the processor socket, the cradle on which the processor sits on and connects to. Varying from the different families of processors, there's generally 400+ small pins that connect the CPU to the motherboard's Northbridge (described in part 3).
The small bar on the left hand side is the lock bar, which moves the surrounding cage (the silver metal square) so that the processor cannot accidentally dislodge and lose connection to the mother board. The socket is also the place where the CPU cooler connects to (details on the Computer Cooling page).
The small bar on the left hand side is the lock bar, which moves the surrounding cage (the silver metal square) so that the processor cannot accidentally dislodge and lose connection to the mother board. The socket is also the place where the CPU cooler connects to (details on the Computer Cooling page).
2. These are the RAM (Random Access Memory) connectors. In this case, the motherboard supports DDR2 (Double Date Rate 2, an upgrade from DDR) at a maximum of 1066MHz. Dual channel refers to the data stream, twice as much as a single channel. More information can be found at the RAM page.
3. This is the computer Northbridge. More modern computers and CPUs will have these built in, rather than as a separate chip. The job of the Northbridge is to manage and control the CPU, telling it what information to process when.
4. These are the PCI slots (Peripheral Component Interconnect). These slots allow the motherboard to accept for components such as a Graphic card, Network card or Sound card.
5. This is the AGP slot (Accelerated Graphics Port), and it is an older style connection for discrete graphics cards. Coming in two different models, 8x (8 times) and 16x (16 times), the difference between them is that the 16x can send and receive data at twice the rate of the 8x and refers to the bus multiplier.
6. This is the motherboards power connector. Called a Molex connector, it connects the board to the computers PSU.
7. These are various connectors in and out of the mother board. Left to Right there is the Audio Output Jack, Ethernet connector, USB slot, two VGA outputs and the keyboard/mouse connectors.
8. This row of connectors is a power supply for small fans, such as the CPU cooler and case fans.
9. These are SATA and extra power connectors for hard drives.