Motherboard

Motherboard
 The spine of the computer is the motherboard
also known as system board.
 This is olive green or brown circuit board.
 It is most important component of the
computer as it connects all the other
components of the computer.
 On motherboard you can find CPU,
Expansion slots, Video Components, RAM
slots and variety of other chips.
Types of Motherboard
 There are two major types of system board:
 Nonintegrated System Board
 Integrated System Board
Nonintegrated System Board

 Each major assembly (Video circuitry,

Expansion card, disk controller) is installed in
the computer as an expansion card.
 The processor, memory and expansion slots
are all in line with each other.
 Nonintegrated motherboards are also
classified by their form factor AT and ATX.
Integrated System Board

 Most of the components that would otherwise

be installed as expansion cards are
integrated into the motherboard circuitry.
 Integrated system boards were designed for
simplicity.
 The drawback of these board was when one
component breaks, you can not just replace
the component that is broken, the whole
motherboard must be replaced.
Various Motherboard Form
Factors
The motherboard form factor indicates the shape and size
specifications of the board. The form factor also determines
additional parameters such as the casing, power supply,
mounting holes, and overall physical layout. The Form
Factors are:
Standard ATX

Micro ATX

Mini-ITX

Nano-ITX

Pico-ITX
Contd...
Standard ATX
Size of ATX board is 12” * 9.6”
Released in 1995 by Intel.

Its COM port, LPT port, PS/2, and USB are mounted directly on the
motherboard.
Micro ATX
It is an evolution of ATX. Its measures are 9.6 × 9.6 inches.
The Micro-ATX supports up to four expansion slots that can
combine freely with ISA, PCI, PCI / ISA shared, and AGP.
Mounting holes changed from the Standard ATX, since the
measurements are different, but they are also compatible
with most ATX cabinets.
This type of motherboard form factor supports both Intel
and AMD processors. It is commonly used on Small Form
Factor Desktop Computers.
Mini ITX
 Mini ITX is a low-power consumption motherboard format of 6.7 ×
6.7 inches. Its dimensions are the most characteristic factor of this
type of form factor.
 Mini-ITX is a compact motherboard configuration designed to
support relatively low-cost computers in small spaces.
 Video, audio, and local area network (LAN) connection are built into
the Mini-ITX. It also has two universal serial bus ( USB ) ports, a
serial and parallel port, audio input and output, and a Peripheral
Component Interconnect ( PCI ) slot that can support two devices
Nano ITX
 Also know as Information Technology Extended,
developed by VIA Technologies.
 Mini-ITX often has two memory slots, 1 PCI Express or
mini-PCI slot, several USB ports, and one network port.
Motherboard Components
 Expansion slots
 Memory slots
 CPU slots or sockets
 Power connectors
 On board disk drive connectors
 Keyboard connectors
 Peripheral port and connectors
 BIOS chips
 CMOS battery
 Jumpers
 Firmware
Expansion slots
 The most visible part of any motherboard are
expansion slots, looks like small plastic slots.
Expansion slots
 These slots are used to install various
devices in the computer to expand its
capabilities.
 Some expansion devices that might be
installed in these slots include video,
network, sound and disk interface card.
 Types of slots that can be found on
motherboards are: ISA, PCI and AGP.
ISA (Industry Standard Architecture)
PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect)
AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port)
ISA (Industry Standard Architecture)
 ISA was the first major expansion bus
architecture that was originally developed as
an 8-bit architecture and then a 16-bit
architecture.
 The ISA bus architecture had a speed of 8
MHz.
 One of the reasons why you still see 16-bit
ISA slots in systems today is because ISA
was the popular bus architecture for many
years.
16 bit ISA Card
Peripheral Component Interconnect
(PCI)

 PCI, is one of the newer bus architectures

that has hit the market. PCI has two flavours:
32-bit cards and 64-bit cards.
 The PCI bus has a speed of 33 MHz.
 One of the other major benefits of PCI is that
it is a plug and play architecture.
Peripheral Component Interconnect
(PCI)

 If you are running a plug and play operating

system like Windows 95/98/2000 (Windows
NT is not a plug and play operating system)
and you have a plug and play BIOS, then the
system resources like IRQs and IO
addresses can be dynamically assigned for
PCI components.
Personal Computer Memory Card Industry
Association (PCMCIA)

 PCMCIA, is a unique type of expansion bus

architecture because of its small size.
PCMCIA is popular in laptop computers.
 PCMCIA is a 16-bit architecture that runs at
33 MHz.
Advanced Graphic Port (AGP)
 AGP, runs at 66 MHz, which is double the
speed of the PCI bus.
 Today’s motherboards have one AGP slot to
insert an AGP video card.
Memory Slots
 Memory slots are the next most productive slots on
a motherboard and they contain memory chips.
 There are two types of memory modules SIMM
(Single Inline Memory Module) and DIMM (Dual
Inline Memory Module).
 SIMMS have 30-72 pins
DIMMS have 168-244 pins
Memory Slots
 The number of memory slots varies from
motherboard to motherboard.
 Metal pins in the bottom make contact with
the soldered tabs on each memory module.
 Small plastic tabs on each side of slots keeps
memory stick/module securely in its slot.
Single In-Line-Pin Package

 Advantage of SIPP was that instead of

installing 8 Chips, you need to install only
one module with 30 pins
Single In-Line Memory Module
 SIMM are an improved version of SIPP
 This was more popular as they don’t have
pins
 They literally fit into a slot
 SIMM comes in two varieties 30pin and 72
pins
Dual In-Line-Memory Module

 The next packaging introduced to market was

DIMM
 These package has 84 pins, but each side is
a separate pin, giving a total of 168 pins.
Small Outline Dual In-Line-Memory
Module
 SoDIMM is a DIMM module used in laptops.
 They have a more compact design
Micro Dual In-Line-Memory Module

 Micro DIMM module was introduced in 2000

 They have 144 pins and have 64 bit data
path
 They are used in Notebook computers.
Rambus In-Line Memory
Module
 Rambus In-Line Memory Module is the latest
RAM technology.
 RIMM has total 184 pins
 RIMM modules are covered with heat
spreader.
CPU Slots or Sockets
 A processor socket is a socket designed to hold a
specific processor chip with the appropriate number
of pins.
 Sockets are basically flat and have several rows of
holes arranged in a square
 This helps the users to update their computers by
dropping the new processor in the compatible
socket.
Types of Processor Sockets
ZIFSocket
Processor
 One of the easiest items to recognize on the
motherboard is the processor. The processor
is usually the largest chip on the system
board and can be identified generally
because it often has a heat sink or fan
located on top of it.
Heat Sink
 Due to the size of the Pentium processor and
the number of transistors passing current, the
chip reached undesirable levels of heat, which
caused it to become unstable.
 Thus, many of the Pentium processors came
with either a cooling fan or heat sinks.
Heat Sink/ CPU Fan
 Heat sinks are a group of metal-like pins that are
placed on the chip to draw heat away from it.
 A cooling fan is a small fan placed on top of the
processor. The function of the cooling fan is to
pull the hot air away from the processor, helping
to keep the processor cool.
Power Connectors
 Located on the system board, you should see
a type of connector that you can use to
connect the power supply to the
motherboard.
 All of these devices connected to the
motherboard need to get power from
somewhere, so the power supply is
connected to the motherboard, which
supplies power to the board and its
components.
Power Connectors
 There are power cables coming from the
power supply.
 These may be labelled as P1 and P2, or on
some systems, P8 and P9.
On board Disk Drive
Connector
 Most of the drives need a connection to the
motherboard so the computer can talk to disk
drive; these connection are known as drive
interfaces.
 There are two types of drive interfaces:
 Floppy drive interface
 Hard disk interface
Keyboard Connector
 The most important input device for a PC is
the keyboard.
 There are two main types of keyboard
connectors AT(DIN 6 connector) and PS2.
Peripheral port and connectors
 Two of the most common ports on the back
of your computer are the serial ports and the
parallel ports.
 Most computers have one parallel port and
two serial ports. They are used to connect
different types of devices to your computer.
 Parallel ports send data over multiple wires
simultaneously, while serial ports only send
data over one wire at a time.
Peripheral port and connectors
 Serial ports, on the other hand, deliver data
sequentially down a single wire. Eight bits of
digital data are converted into analog data
using a system called baud.
 Baud rate refers to the number of state
changes (tones) that are made on the wire in
any given second.
 Today, 56Kbps (57,344 bps) modems
communicate at 9,600 baud.
Peripheral port and connectors
 Depending on the baud rate used to transfer
data, the length of the cable can range up to
5,000 feet. For data transfer rates at 9,600
baud, the maximum cabling length is 250
feet.
 The RS-232C standard, which is used as a
basis of serial communication, recommends
a maximum cable length of 50 feet.
Universal Serial Bus
 Universal Serial bus, or USB, is a new
release of the serial standard. The goal of
USB was to revolutionize the way serial
communication was conducted. In an effort to
fulfil this goal, USB uses a new cabling
system that allows up to 127 devices to be
connected together.
Universal Serial Bus
 It also delivers power to the devices that are
connected on this bus. To go along with this
new cabling, the specification for USB
dictates that all devices should support Plug-
and-Play.
 Some USB devices that require a large
amount of power may use a supplemental
power supply, but the USB bus will power
most devices.
BIOS (Basic Input Output
System) Chip
 Locating the BIOS chip on the system board is easy;
it is usually rectangular in shape and generally
features the manufacturer’s name as a label on the
chip. Some of the popular manufacturers are AMI,
AWARD, and IBM.
 The Basic Input Output System (BIOS) is the low-
level program code that allows all the system
devices to communicate with one another.
 This low-level program code is stored in the BIOS
chip on the motherboard.
BIOS (Basic Input Output
System) Chip
 The BIOS chip is a ROM (read only memory) chip,
which means that you can read information from the
chip, but you cannot write to the chip under normal
circumstances.
 The BIOS chip also contains code that controls the
boot process for your system. It contains code that
will perform a power on self test (POST), which
means that the computer goes through a number of
tests, checking itself out and making sure that it is
okay.
 The BIOS then locates a bootable partition and calls
on the master boot record, which will load an
operating system.
MBR contains a boot loader
Boot loader contains the information of the Operating System, Logical
drives and remains in the first sector of the hard disk
BIOS (Basic Input Output
System) Chip
Unified Extensible Firmware
Interface
 In recent, BIOS has been replaced with UEFI.
 The BIOS will soon be dead: Intel has
announced plans to completely replace it with
UEFI on all their chipsets by 2020.
 Both UEFI and BIOS are low-level software
that starts when you boot your PC before
booting your operating system, but UEFI is a
more modern solution, supporting larger hard
drives and more partions.
MBR Vs GPT
 GPT is GUID Partition table, similar to MBR
in BIOS
 This new standard avoids the limitations of
the BIOS. The UEFI firmware can boot from
drives of 2.2 TB or larger—in fact, the
theoretical limit is 9.4 zettabytes.

GUID: Global Unique Identification Number

CMOS and Battery
 The inventory list of a computer such as the
size of the hard disk that is installed in the
computer, the amount of RAM, and the
resources (IRQs and IO addresses) used by
the serial and parallel ports are stored in
Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor
(CMOS) RAM.
Battery
 RAM loses its content when the power is shut
off. You don’t want the computer to forget
that it has a hard disk or forget how much
RAM it has installed.
 To prevent this sort of problem, a small
watch-like battery on the system board
maintains enough energy so that CMOS
RAM does not lose its charge.
Battery
 If CMOS RAM loses its charge, it results in
the CMOS content being lost.
Jumpers
 A jumper is a set of pins on a card or board
that applies a certain setting when a circuit is
closed on a certain subset of the pins.
 Each jumper set on a card has a label
associated with it.
Jumpers
 The documentation (finding the documentation is
the challenge!) for the card tells you what the jumper
set of J10 is actually used for. Suppose that the
jumper set of J10 sets the IRQ value, and that the
jumper set has 6 pins. The documentation for the
card may tell you, for example, that you need to set
the jumper across pins 1 and 2 to assign IRQ 4,
across pins 3 and 4 to assign IRQ 5, and across
pins 5 and 6 to assign IRQ 10.