Aroroy Municipal College

MOTHERBOARD
A N D

ITS FUNCTION
Technical Terms
• Motherboards by different names like mainboard, logic board, baseboard,
system board, MOBO
• EATX – Extended Advanced Technology Extended
• ATX – Advanced Technology Extended
• ITX – Information Technology eXtended
• CPU – Central Processing Unit
• LGA stands for land grid array
• PGA stands for pin grid array
• BGA stands for ball grid array.
• PCI stands for Peripheral Component Interconnected
• ZIF (zero insertion force) processors, meaning you don’t have to press
them to the socket during installation
• CMOS is also called CMOS RAM, COS-MOS, and NVRAM(Non-Volatile
RAM) in the market.
Motherboard
- is considered the main board of a computer system
that holds all the connectors and circuitry to connect
several system components
FORM FACTOR
The form factor of a motherboard refers to its physical size, shape, and
layout. Different form factors are designed to fit specific computer cases
and offer varying levels of expandability. Common form factors include:

Read More
Parts of Motherboard

RAM chip and RAM Slot

01
RAM (random access memory) is a type of
temporary data storage device found in
computers and other electronic devices.

RAM slot is a connector on your computer's

motherboard where you can insert the RAM
chips. These slots are designed to hold the
RAM securely and allow it to communicate
with the rest of the system.
Parts of Motherboard

CPU chip and Socket

02
CPU is an abbreviation for Central
Processing Unit. Computers and other
electronic devices sometimes refer to the
central processing unit (CPU) as their
"brain" because it handles all of the
device's decision-making functions.
Parts of Motherboard

CPU chip and Socket

02 BGA
BGA stands for ball grid array.

This type of socket and CPU is

prevalent in consoles and mobile
devices where the users are not
expected to tamper with the hardware.
Similar to PGA and LGA models, BGA
sockets and processors have to have
the same number of perfectly matched
contact points for them to work.
Parts of Motherboard

CPU chip and Socket

02
Parts of Motherboard

Power Supply Plug

03 The primary function of the
Motherboard’s Power Supply Unit or
(PSU) is to supply power to the
Motherboard and its attached
components and peripherals.
 Power Supply Plug
03 i. Motherboard connector – connects the power supply to a particular
motherboard. ATX motherboards are attached with 20 or 24 pin
connectors.

iii. SATA connector– connector for

ii. CPU connector – used to connect
devices using serial advanced
power supplies to motherboards
technology attachment (SATA)
with onboard computer processing
interfaces, such as hard drives.
units (CPUs). These are either 4
(“P4”) or 8-pin connectors.
v. Molex connector – the IDE
iv. PCI express connector – used to connector that connects to hard
connect PCI express video cards, drives and CD ROM drives. Most
which receive power directly from computer power supplies include
the power supply rather from the at least one of these connectors.
motherboard
Parts of Motherboard

Heatsink
04
Heatsinks use a thermal conductor
to reduce heat generated and
prevent overheating from hardware
components like CPU, GPU,
northbridge, southbridge, RAM
modules, etc. In general, that
component that generates heat
requires a heatsink.
Parts of Motherboard

Liquid Coolant Heatsink

04
Parts of Motherboard

PCI chip and PCI Slot

05
PCI stands for Peripheral Component
Interconnected and is an attached
hardware component of the motherboard
that enables you to connect various
hardware components such as modems,
disk controllers, NIC, Sound Cards, graphics
cards, SSD add-on cards, RAID cards,
additional USB and serial ports without
having to add or replace the motherboard.
Parts of Motherboard

PCI chip and PCI Slot

05
Parts of Motherboard

PCI chip and PCI Slot

05
1. What is the full form of PCI and PCIe(or PCI-E)?
Ans: PCI stands for Peripheral Component Interconnected. PCIe stands for Peripheral
Component Interconnected Express.

2. Do we have PCI slots on laptops?

Ans: Generally PCI slots are available on desktop PCs but not in most laptops do not
have reusable PCI slots because of their compact size and space. On some laptops, we
can use it if you have ExpressCard Slots and can get adaptors to use PCI or PCIe.
Parts of Motherboard

AGP slot and chip

06
AGP Slot (Accelerated Graphics Port
Slot) is a type of expansion slot similar
to a PCI slot, although it is mostly used
for graphics cards. Intel was the first
to introduce it in 1996. This expansion
slot is easily identifiable because it is
usually brown in color.
Parts of Motherboard

North Bridge
07 North Bridge is also known as
Memory Controller Hub or Host
Bridge.

It is the motherboard’s primary controller,

directing traffic to and from CPU.

As a result, the north bridge chip has an

impact on the computer’s performance.
Because it performs a lot processing, it
usually comes with a heatsink.
Parts of Motherboard

North Bridge
07 Characteristics of North bridge

• It connects south bridge to the CPU.

• It handles and communicates faster components on the motherboard like
Main Memory, AGP, PCIe, ROM and CPU.
• It act as controller for bus speed on the motherboard.
• Generally, it does lots of work with the CPU, so it is located near to the CPU
generally with the heatsink.
• It is a core component and is directly connected to the CPU.
Parts of Motherboard

South Bridge
08
South Bridge is an IC chip that manages and
controls IO functionality on the motherboard.

The CPU sends an instruction to the

northbridge, which then sends it to the
southbridge. It is linked to the PCI bus, ISA
buses, IDE buses, audio, serial devices such as
a mouse, keyboard, USB ports, and so on, as
well as a SATA hard disk connector.
Parts of Motherboard

System Block Diagram

Parts of Motherboard

ROM/BIOS chip
09
The BIOS is the firmware or programs
that comes with your motherboard.

ROM/BIOS chip is a non-volatile

storage whose content will not get
erased even after power is cut off.
Content stored in ROM is impossible
or very difficult to modify.
Parts of Motherboard

CMOS Backup Battery

09 CMOS stand for “Complementary Metal Oxide
Semiconductor” and is found in both laptop
and desktop PCs in the form of small circular
coin.

CMOS stores a variety of system data such as

the current system clock, date, time, pulses,
commonly used hardware setting, BIOS
configuration settings, BOOT sequences, BIOS
master/admin password, and so on.
Parts of Motherboard

CMOS Backup Battery

09 More about CMOS

• CMOS chips were first introduced in the IBM computer.

• CMOS is low-power technology chip so it last longer.
• CMOS can store usually up to 256bytes of information.
• CMOS battery in laptop and desktop PC is 3V
• CMOS battery life 2 to 10 years (source: hp store)

• Commonly used CMOS battery in PCs is a CR2032 lithium coin cell

Parts of Motherboard

CMOS Backup Battery

09
1. What happens if the CMOS battery dies?
Ans: CMOS battery in PCs operates at 3V. If the CMOS battery goes below 2.6V
then CMOS has more chances to lose BIOS settings and hardware settings, dates,
and times. Even sometimes the Operating System will also not load properly.
Parts of Motherboard

SATA and PATA port and connector

10
PATA is the acronym that stands for Parallel Advanced Technology
Attachment. It is a ribbon cable with 40 pins that is used to connect mass
storage devices such as hard disk and optical dives to computer.
Parts of Motherboard

SATA and PATA port and connector

10
SATA is an abbreviation for Serial Advance
Technology Attachment. It is a 7-pin cable that is
shorter and more powerful than the PATA
connector, and it serves the same purpose.
Parts of Motherboard

SATA and PATA port and connector

10 There are several advantages of using SATA over PATA

• Reduce Cable size: The size of the SATA bale is shorter than the PATA cable.
The maximum cable length of SATA is 18inch and PATA’s maximum cable
length is 39inches.
• Higher Bandwidth: The bandwidth ranges of various PATA cable is between
16MB/s – 133MB/s. But bandwidth ranges of various SATA cable is
between 150MB/s – 600MB/s.
• SATA has hot-swappable features: SATA cable from the devices can be
plugged in and out even system is ON(But don’t try with running disk or
CDROM). Hot-swappable does not work with PATA
Parts of Motherboard

Back Panel is the portion of the

motherboard that lets you
connect external devices, such as
your monitor, speakers, keyboard
and mouse.
Parts of Motherboard

PS/2 Port
11
PS/2 port was popular in older desktop PCs. But now it is obsolete.
• PS/2 (green color) is for the mouse
• PS/2 (purple color) is for keyboard
Parts of Motherboard

Parallel Port
12
Parallel port is used to transfer data through
multiple communication channels in parallel.
Printers, Scanners, Zip drives, external HDDs,
tape back-up devices, external CD ROMs and
other similar devices
Parts of Motherboard

Serial Port
13
With a serial port, only one bit of data gets
transferred at a time. It is found in an older PC
to connect older keyboard, PDAs, external
modems.
Parts of Motherboard

VGA, DVI & S-Video Port

14 VGA is the abbreviation for Video Graphics Array. VGA is an analog
video that capable of transmitting video resolutions up to 640 x 480
pixel, 800 x 600 pixel and sometimes higher with reduced image
quality.
DVI is the abbreviation for Digital Visual Interface. DVI is a digital and
analog video interface and can support various video resolution,
including standard-definition (SD) and High definition (HD)
resolutions.
Parts of Motherboard

VGA, DVI & S-Video Port

14
S-Video is the abbreviation for Separate Video is used for
transmitting only video signal.
Parts of Motherboard

HDMI Port
15
HDMI stand for High-Definition Multimedia Interface. HDMI is a
digital interface to connect High Definition and Ultra High Definition
devices like computer monitor, HDTV’s, Blu-Ray players, gaming
consoles, High Definition cameras, etc.
Parts of Motherboard

16 USB Port
USB is the abbreviation for Universal Serial Bus. Is a plug and play
interface that allows a computer to communicate with peripheral and
other devices.

Transfer speed : 1.5Mbps – 12Mbps

Transfer speed : 480Mbps
Transfer speed : 5Gbps 3.0 Gen 1 x1

Transfer speed : 10Gbps 3.1 Gen 1 x2

Transfer speed : 20Gbps

Parts of Motherboard

RJ-45 Port
17
Register Jack is abbreviated as RJ. It
resembles a telephone jack, but it is slightly
larger. RJ-45 is also know as an Ethernet
port because it is used to connect a
computer to the internet. The RJ-45 port is
used to connect to the Local Area Network
via a twisted pair ethernet cable.
Parts of Motherboard

eSATA Port
18
Some computer also has an external SATA port. It is used to
connect external secondary devices like external HDDs, SSD
and CD ROM. It much faster than the USB 3.0 port
Parts of Motherboard

Audio Port
19
Audio Port refers to a physical connection or socket where
you can plug in audio devices such as headphones,
speakers, microphones, or other audio peripherals.
• Green color port is a line out which is for headphones and stereo
speakers.
• Pink/Light pink port for microphones input
• Light Blue port is line In, which is for Mp3 players, DVD players, CD
players, stereo, receivers, turntables, electric guitar and VCR audio
outputs.
• Dolby Audio black port for rear speaker.
• The Orange/Yellow Port is the Center/Bass channel which is for the
subwoofer.
Parts of Motherboard

Front Panel Connectors

20
The Front Panel Connectors, or the Front Panel Header or FPanel is a
block of connectors on a motherboard that controls the power on,
power reset, beep code speaker, and the LED light indicators on your
PC case/chassis.
THANK
FOR ATTENTION