1

CHAPTER 2
Motherboard

m.r.m.rosman | Faculty of Information Management

rahimimr@uitm.edu.my | rahimi.rosman@yahoo.com
 WHAT IS MOTHERBOARD

M-BOARD
DEFINITION
Motherboard or M-Board is an integrated circuit that
house the CPU and allow all devices to communicate
with it

TYPES

AT (older) and ATX (newer)

CHARACTERISTICS
Differ in overal performance, size, features,
case and power connector

BASIC FUNCTION

Allow devices to communicate with the CPU and each other.

 TYPES OF MOTHERBOARD

AT MOTHERBOARD ATX MOTHERBOARD

Older type of motherboard, Newer type of
#1 does not have an integrated
port.
#2 motherboard, provides an
integrated port.

CONTENT HERE
Lorem Ipsum has two main
data statistical
 ATX Motherboard

Micro-ATX Mini ITX E-ATX

It is smaller than the typical Mini ITX is 6.7 x 6.7 inch in The size is huge with lot
ATX Motherboards with dimension which is smaller of features for high end
the dimension of 9.6 x 9.6 than any other processing.
inch conventional Motherboard

Provides a maximum of Enables low power Mainly used for gaming

four expansion slots. consumption. and can be extended to
add more memory and
CPUs.
 ATX P1
AT P8 & P9
 Major Components
There are five major components of a system board:

Processing Communication
CPU and Chipset
BUS and Expansion
slots

Firmware & Setup

Temporary Storage Flash BIOS memory
Random Access chip and CMOS chip
Memory (RAM) and
Cache memory

Electrical System
Power supply connections
2.1 M-Board Form Factors
 12
FORM FACTOR

AT ATX
Invented by IBM in the early • The position of the power supply
1980s, was the predominant enables better air movement
Form factor for motherboards • The CPU and RAM are placed to
through the mid-1990s. AT is now enable easier access
obsolete • Placement of RAM closer to the CPU
than on AT boards offer users
enhanced performance as well
• The shorter the wires, the easier to
The AT type of motherboard had shield them and make them capable
a large keyboard plug in the of handling double or quadruple the
same relative spot on the clock speed of the motherboard
motherboard • ATX motherboards use a feature
called soft power. This means that
they can use software to turn the PC
Form Factors on and off
Form Factors

WHAT IS MOTHERBOARD FORM FACTORS?

Form factors are industry standardized shapes and layouts that enable motherboards to work with cases and power supplies
Form factors also known as set of specification that determines the internal size and shapes of a computer case
2.2 Chipset
 WHAT IS CHIPSET?

CHIPSET
DEFINITION
Chipset controls most of the activities on the
motherboard.

FUNCTION #1
Determine type of processot the
motherboard accepts

FUNCTION #2
Determine type and capacity of RAM

FUNCTION #3
Determined internal and external devices the motherboard
supports.
2.3 Choosing M-BOARD
 CHOOSING M-BOARD

Computer
Specification 1st Motherboard manual

2nd
Form Factors 3rd
Wires

4th
5th
Computer Case
Installing
motherboard

6th
 STEP 1: 18

What motherboard
you need? Will the motherboard
work with that CPU?

What CPU are you

using? How much RAM do
you intend to install?
 STEP 2: 19

What type of form

factors that you need? Make sure you’re
getting a form factor
that works with your
case

Do you prefer better

performance or Don’t try to put a
compact design? regular ATX
motherboard into a
micro ATX case!
 STEP 3: 20

Even if you let

All motherboards someone else install
come with a technical the motherboard,
manual, better known insist on the
as the motherboard motherboard book;
book. you will need it

Provide main source

for all of the critical Nowadays user
information about the manual can be
motherboard. downloaded from the
manufacturer
website.
 STEP 4: 21

The mini-tower and

Pick you case mid-tower cases are
carefully. the most popular
choices

Types of cases:
slimline, desktop, Make sure you get a
mini-tower, mid- case that will fit your
tower, tower, and motherboard—many
cube. microATX and all
FlexATX cases are too
small for a regular
ATX motherboard
 STEP 5: 22

The last, and often the

most frustrating, part
of motherboard
installation is These wires have
connecting the LEDs, specific pin
buttons, and front- connections to the
mounted ports on the motherboard
front of the box

These includes Soft

power, Reset button, Although you can
Speaker, Hard drive refer to the
activity LED, Power motherboard book for
LED, USB, FireWire, their location, usually
Sound a quick inspection of
the motherboard will
suffice for an
experienced tech
 STEP 6: 23

First remove the old

motherboard (if you
have one) by
removing all the
cards. Also remove Sometimes even the
anything else that power supply has to
might impede removal be removed
or installation of the temporarily to enable
motherboard, such as access to the
hard drives motherboard

Keep track of your

screws—the best idea
is to return the screws
to their mounting
holes temporarily, at
least until you can
reinstall the parts
Document the
position of the little
wires for the speaker,
power switch, and
reset button in case
you need to reinstall
them

Motherboard Failure
Catastrophic
With a catastrophic failure,
the PC just won’t boot. This
sort of problem happens
with brand-new systems
due to manufacturing
defects—often called a
burn-in failure and to any
system that gets a shock of
electrostatic discharge
Component
Component failure happens
rarely, but appears as flaky
connections between a
device and motherboard, or
as intermittent problems
24
Ethereal
Most difficult to diagnose.
Computers just doesn’t
work all the time such as
reboot itself or getting
Blue Screen of Death.
Often cause by faulty
component, buggy device
driver, buggy application
software, operating
system corruption, and
power supply problem
2.4 M-BOARD Components
26
27
 28

A
• PCI Slot - This board has
2 PCI slots.
• These can be used for
components such as
Ethernet cards, sound
cards, and modems
 29

B
• PCI-E 16x Slot - There are 2 of them on this
motherboard diagram, both are blue.
• These are used for your graphics card. With
two of them onboard, you can run 2 graphics
cards in Scan Line Interleaving (SLI) (NVDia).
• You would only need this if you are a gamer, or
working with high end video / graphics editing.
• These are the 16x speed versions, which are
currently the fastest
 30

Do you know
what is SLI?
31
 32

C
• PCI-E 1x Slot - Single slot - In the PCIe 1.x
generation, each lane (1x) carries 250 MB/s
compared to 133 MB/s for the PCI slots.
• These can be used for expansion cards such as
Sound Cards, or Ethernet Cards.
 33

D
• Northbridge - This is the Northbridge for this
motherboard.
• This allows communication between the CPU
and the system memory and PCI-E slots.
• The chipset is resides at the bottom of the
heatsink
 34

E
• ATX 12V 2X and 4 Pin Power Connection
Power Connection - This is one of two power
connections that supply power to the
motherboard.
• This connection will come from your Power
Supply.
 35

F
• CPU-Fan Connection - This is where your CPU
fan will connect.
• Using this connection over one from your
power supply will allow the motherboard to
control the speed of your fan, based on the
CPU temperature.
 36

G
• Socket - This is where your CPU will plug in.
• The orange bracket that is surrounding it is
used for high end heat sinks.
• It helps to support the weight of the heat sink
 37

H
• Memory Slots - These are the slots for your
RAM. Most boards will have 4 slots, but some
will only have 2.
• The color coding you see on the motherboard
diagram is used to match up RAM for Dual-
Channel.
• Using them this way will give your memory a
speed boost
 38

I
• ATX Power Connector - This is the second of
two power connections.
• This is the main power connection for the
motherboard, and comes from the Power
Supply.
 39

J
• IDE Connection - The IDE (Integrated Drive
Electronics) is the connection for your hard
drive or CD / DVD drive.
• Most drives today come with SATA
connections, so you may not use this.
 40

K
• Southbridge - This is the controller for
components such as the PCI slots, onboard
audio, and USB connections.
 41

L
• SATA Connections - These are 4 of the 6 SATA
connections on the motherboard.
• These will be used for hard drives, and CD /
DVD drives.
 42

M
• Front Panel Connections - this is where you
will hook in the connections from your case.
• These are mostly the different lights on your
case, such as power on, hard drive activity etc
 43

N
• FDD Connection - The FDD is the Floppy Disk
controller.
• If you have a floppy disk drive in your
computer, this is where you will hook it up.
 44

O
• External USB Connections - This is where you
will plug in external USB connections for your
case or USB bracket
 45

P
• CMOS battery - This is the motherboard's
battery.
• This is used to allow the CMOS to keep its
settings.
 46

Q
• The advent of processors and other devices
running at different voltages--in the "old days"
they all used to run at the 5V provided by a
standard power supply--has led to the
necessity of one or more voltage regulators on
most modern motherboards.
• These regulators reduce the 5V signal to those
voltages typically needed by processors: 3.3V
or lower.
 47

R
• The BIOS chip is host to the Basic Input/Output
System, without this chip a computer would
not be able to boot-up.
• It contains a low-level program which carries
out a POST (power-on self-test) as soon as the
computer is turned on
 48

S
• Capacitors are electrical components that are
used to filter and smooth signals on the
motherboard
• Capacitors of the type used on motherboards
generally come in two flavors: tantalum or
electrolytic
 49

T
• A network interface controller is a computer
hardware component that connects a
computer to a computer network.
• The controller may also be referred to as a
network adapter, or a LAN adapter
• Whereas network interface controllers were
commonly implemented on expansion cards
that plug into a computer bus and known as a
network interface card, network card or LAN
card, the low cost and ubiquity of the
Ethernet standard means that most newer
computers have a network interface built into
the motherboard.
 50

U
• Transistor is a type of electronic switch. It is
made up of sections of n-typeand p-type
semiconductors that switch a current on or off
• A transistor is a semiconductor device used to
amplify and switch electronic signals
 51

V
• Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a specification to
establish communication between devices
and a host controller (usually a personal
computer)
• USB can connect computer peripherals such
as mice, keyboards, digital cameras, printers,
personal media players, flash drives, Network
Adapters, and external hard drives. For many
of those devices, USB has become the
standard connection method.
 52

W
• The PS/2 connector is a 6-pin Mini-DIN
connector used for connecting some
keyboards and mice to a PC compatible
• computer
Jumpers are pins on
system. Its aname
motherboard or other
comes from the
device,
IBM that areSystem/2
Personal used to provide
series configuration
of personal
informationwith
computers, to the hardware.
which it was introduced in
• 1987
A single jumper consists of a pair of pins, with
a small rectangular shunt that can be placed
over both pins to short them together.
• The hardware is programmed to act one way
when the jumper is shorted, and another way
when it is left open
 53

W
X
• The PS/2 connector is a 6-pin Mini-DIN
connector used for connecting some
• A POST card
keyboards andis amice
diagnostic
to a tool
PC that reports
compatible
error codes
computer produced
system. by a POST.
Its name comes from the
• TheyPersonal
IBM are used System/2
by technicians
seriesto of
troubleshoot
personal
computers that
computers, withrefuse
whichtoitboot.
was introduced in
• The cards relay POST codes generated by the
1987
system, and the system must therefore have a
working CPU and BIOS, in addition to
whatever I/O interface the POST card relies
on.
• Thus, POST cards cannot be used to diagnose
the cause of e.g. a dead motherboard.
 54

W
Y
• Audio Port:
• Used to connect speakers,
• The PS/2 connector is a 6-pin Mini-DIN
microphones, and other audio
connector used for connecting some
devices
keyboards and mice to a PC compatible
computer system. Its name comes from the
IBM Personal System/2 series of personal
computers, with which it was introduced in
1987
 55

W
Z
• The PS/2 connector is a 6-pin Mini-DIN
• connector
Printed circuit
usedboard,
for orconnecting
PCB, is usedsometo
mechanically
keyboards andsupport
mice and
to electrically connect
a PC compatible
electronicsystem.
computer components
Its nameusing
comes conductive
from the
pathways,
IBM tracks
Personal or signalseries
System/2 tracesofetched from
personal
copper sheets
computers, laminated
with which it was onto a non-
introduced in
conductive substrate
1987
• PCBs are inexpensive, and can be highly
reliable.
• They require much more layout effort and
higher initial cost than either wire wrap or
point-to-point construction, but are much
cheaper and faster for high-volume
production.
 56

That’s all
for today. C
U ALL in
next class!!
 57

1.What is the main purpose of a motherboard?

2.Define motherboard form factor
3.List five (5) classification of a motherboard components
4.Define cache memory
5.What is the function of a COAST?
6.Explain briefly the differences between AT and ATX motherboard
7.List three location whereas configuration information can be found
8.Define POST card
9.Explain briefly three categories of a motherboard failure
10.Explain briefly the importance criteria in selecting a motherboard