MOTHERBOARD

 the mainboard, system board, planar board or l

ogic board.
 a printed circuit board (PCB) found in all moder
n computers which holds many of the crucial co
mponents of the system, such as the central proc
essing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides con
nectors for other peripherals.
 the foundation of a computer
 Motherboard is/has

 Multi-layered printed circuit board

 Copper circuit paths called traces carry signal

s and voltages across the motherboard

 Some layers carry data for input/output while

other layers carry voltage and ground returns
Motherboards

 Motherboards connect all devices in a compu

ter

 Motherboards handle communications (the el

ectrical signals) between the devices, ports, a
nd slots

 Comprised of many individual circuit traces g

rouped together to form busses.
Think of a Motherboard as:
 Futuristic City with many modular plug-in buil
dings, using power from a common electrical
system.

 Multiple-lane highways of various widths tran

sporting data between buildings.

 Data and power infrastructure for the entire c

omputer.
 Motherboard

 Holds The Processor

 Memory
 Expansion Slots
 Connects Directly or Indirectly to
Every Part of The PC
 AT Motherboard

 An AT motherboard is a motherboard which has dimensions of the order of
some hundred millimeters, big enough to be unable to fit in mini desktops.
The dimensions of this motherboard make it difficult for the new drives to
get installed. The concept of six pin plugs and sockets is used so as to work as
the power connectors for this type of motherboards.
 The hard to distinguish power connector sockets make it difficult for many
users to easily make the proper connections and thus leading to the damage
of the device.
 Produced in the mid 80’s, this motherboard lasted a good span from the
Pentium p5 to the times when Pentium 2 had been started to be used.

 ATX Motherboard

 Advanced technology extended, or popularly known as the ATX, are the
motherboards which were produced by the Intel in mid 90’s as an
improvement from the previously working motherboards such as AT.
 This type of motherboards differ from their AT counterparts in the way that
these motherboards allow the interchangeability of the connected parts.
Moreover the dimensions of this motherboard are smaller than the AT
motherboards and thus proper place for the drive bays is also allowed.
 Some good changes were also made to the connector system of the board.
The AT motherboards had a keyboard connector and on the back plates extra
slots were provided for various add-ons.
 LPX Motherboard

 The low profile extension motherboards, better known as LPX motherboards,
were created after the AT boards in the 90’s.
 The major difference between these and previous boards is that the input
and output ports in these boards are present at the back of the system. This
concept proved to be beneficial and was also adopted by the AT boards in
their newer versions. The use of a riser card was also made for the
placement of some more slots. But these riser cards also posed a problem
that the air flow was not proper.
 Also, some low quality LPX boards didn’t even have real AGP slot and simply
connected to the PCI bus. All these unfavored aspects led to the extinction of
this motherboard system and was succeeded by the NLX.

 BTX Motherboard
 BTX stands for Balanced Technology extended.
 BTX was developed to reduce or avoid some of the issues that came up while
using latest technologies. Newer technologies often demand more power
and they also release more heat when implemented on motherboards in
accordance with the circa-1996 ATX specification. The ATX standard and the
BTX standard, both were proposed by Intel. The first company to use, or to
be precise, implement BTX was Gateway Inc, followed by Dell and
MPC. Apple’s MacPro uses only some of the elements of the BTX design
system but it is not BTX compliant. This type of motherboard has some
improvements over previous technologies:
 Thermal design – The BTX design provides a straighter path of airflow with
lesser difficulties, which results in better overall cooling capabilities. Instead
of a dedicated cooling fan, a large 12 cm case-fan is mounted, that draws its
air directly from outside the computer and then cools the CPU through an air
duct. Another feature of BTX is the vertical mounting of the motherboard on
the left-hand side. This kind of feature results in the graphics card heat sink
or fan facing upwards, rather than in the direction of the adjacent expansion
card.

 Pico BTX Motherboard

 Pico BTX is a motherboard form factor that is meant to manufacture even
smaller size BTX standard. This is smaller than many current “micro” sized
motherboards, hence the name “Pico” has been used. Various computer
cases for instance, the Cooler Master Series (Stackers) were released to
support a wide range of motherboard standards such as ATX, BTX, Mini-ATX
and so on, in order to simplify motherboard development without buying a
new case; however, all connector and slot standards are identical, including
PCI(e) cards, processors, RAM, hard drives, etc.
 BTX power supply units can be exchanged with latest ATX12V units, but not
with older ATX power supplies that don’t have the extra 4-pin 12V connector.

 Mini ITX Motherboard

 Mini-ITX is a 17 × 17 cm (6.7 × 6.7 in) low-power motherboard form factor. It
was designed by VIA Technologies in year 2001. These are largely used
in small form factor (SFF) computer systems. Mini-ITX boards can also be
cooled easily because of their low power consumption architecture. Such an
architecture makes them widely useful for home theater PC systems or
systems where fan noise can diminish the quality or worth of cinema
experience.
The Motherboard
 Expansion slots (PCI Express, PCI, and AGP) 3-pin case fan connectors Back pane
connectors
 Heatsink 4-Pin (P4) power connector Inductor
 Capacitor CPU Socket Northbridge
 Screw hole Memory slot Super I/O
 Floppy connection ATA (IDE) disk drive primary connection
 24-pin ATX power Supply connector Serial ATA connections
 Coin cell battery (CMOS backup battery) RAID System panel connectors
 FWH(FirmWare Hub) Southbridge Serial port connector
 USB headers Jumpers Integrated circuit 1394 headers
 SPDIF(Sony and Phillips Digital Interconnect Format) CD-IN BIOS
 Cache memory Chipset Diode
 Dip switches Electrolytic Fuse
 Game port and MIDI header Internal speaker LCC(Leadless Chip Carrier)
 Network header Obsolete expansion slots (AMR, CNR, EISA, ISA, VESA)
 Obsolete memory slots (SIMM) Onboard LED Parallel port header
 PS/2 header Resistor Serial port header
 Screw hole aka mounting hole SCSI Solenoid
 Voltage regulator Voltage regulator module (VRM)