PARTS OF A MOTHERBOARD

PARTS OF A MOTHERBOARD

1. CPU HOLDER is a portion in the motherboard which holds the CPU (Central Processing Unit) or simply as processor.

2. MEMORY (RAM) HOLDER or MEMORY SLOT. This is the slot where you will insert the memory module or memory card. Some motherboard comes with two to four slots. Aside from the motherboard specification, looking at the memory slots would help you to know which type of memory card is compatible.

3. POWER SUPPLY CONTROLER is the portion where you can connect the power supply unit (PSU) cable connector. Motherboards come with different power supply controller. Old motherboard needs AT power supply unit while new motherboard needs ATX power supply

4. CHIPSET is the base or platform that supports and provides data-transfer connections between the processor, memory, AGP, PCI-E, and PCI expansion cards, disk drives, and other peripheral devices.

A. North Bridge Chipset- this chipset handles the data-transfer duties of memory, CPU, and AGP and to make the most efficient use of available resources.

B. South Bridge Chipset- this chipset component provides support for a wide variety of devices with many differing bus speeds and designs. Control over secondary buses such as USB, IDE, PS/2, Ethernet is the Southbridge's main role.

5. CMOS:(Complementary Metal Oxide Semi-conductor) is also a chipset which contains the BIOS (Basic Input Output System). The BIOSis the built-in software that tells what a computer can do without accessing programs from a disk.

6. CMOS BATTERYis a battery that maintains the time, date, hard disk and other configuration settings in the CMOS memory. CMOS batteries are small and are attached directly to the motherboard.

7. IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) CONTROLLER FOR HARD DISK DRIVE AND OPTICAL DRIVE are the connectors to which you will insert an IDE cable (supplied with motherboard). IDE cables connect devices such as hard drive, CD Drives and DVD Drives.

8. IDE CONTROLLER FOR FLOPPY DRIVE is smaller than the IDE controller of hard drive and optical drive. This is where you connect the floppy drive thru IDE cable.

9. SATA -Newest computer mother boards have the new interface called Serial Advance Technology Attachment (S-ATA). SATA has a faster transfer rate than ATA and only 1 device can be attached to it.

10. AGP(Accelerated Graphic Port)was designed specifically for AGP video cards. AGP provided a faster bus speed (66 MHz 1x - 133Mhz 2x - 266Mhz 4x effectively). AGP is a port not a bus unlike the ISA and PCI local buses because it is not expandable, it only involves the two devices the graphics card and the CPU.

11. PCI-EXPRESS:(Peripheral Component Interconnect Express)officially abbreviated as PCI-E or PCIe, is a computer expansion card standard introduced by Intel in 2004, and currently is the most recent and high-performance standard for expansion cards that is generally available on modern personal computers. PCIe was designed to replace PCI, PCI-X, and AGP. Unlike previous PC expansion standards, rather than being a shared parallel bus, it is structured around point-to-point serial links called lanes.

12. PCI:(Peripheral Component Interconnect)some pc’s have a number of PCI slots from 1 up to about 6. These PCI bus runs at 33Mhz and normally 32bits. The PCI bus was the first one to fully support plug and play, where IRQ's and other resources are set up by the OS and there are no need to alter jumpers etc on the hardware. You may insert different peripherals on PCI bus, from sound cards to DVD decoders and graphics accelerators.

14. Ports: These are plug-ins seen at the back of your system unit when the motherboard is placed inside it. The following are the common ports usually seen on a motherboard:

• PS2 Ports

• USB Ports

• Serial Ports

• Parallel Ports (Printer Port, VGA Port, Game Port )

• Audio Ports

• Ethernet port

• Firewire port

Determine what CPU is compatible with your motherboard

Knowing the compatible processor for a motherboard is important for a technician because this information will help in case of upgrading or replacing the CPU. 

Upgrading means replacing the processor with another compatible processor but with higher capacity or speed.




Let us test your skills in identifying the parts of the motherboard! Answer the quiz below. Dont forget to type your full name. Goodluck!


Suggested Activities for students: 

PARTS IDENTIFICATION 

DOWNLOAD PARTS OF MOTHERBOARD

Dis-assembly - Assembly of System Unit for Cleaning

Materials: 

• Screwdriver
• Thermal Grease
• Brush 
• Anti-Static wrist strap

Steps: 

1. Power off the system unit and unplug it from the outlet

2. Use the anti-static wrist strap in dis-assembly, assembly.

3. This system unit really needs to be clean, you could see the dust forming inside the CPU fan and heatsink

4. Remove the CPU fan and heatsink.

5. Clean the Dust using brush.

6. The dust in this heat sink will cause your system unit to over heat.

7. Clean the heatsink using brush. 

8. You might also need to clean the Power Supply Unit inside and outside using brush because too much dust might cause overheating too on electronic components.

9. Apply a thermal grease on the CPU.  

10. Remove all the parts and clean it using brush and lint free cloth.

11. Assemble the parts and test the system unit.

HOW TO GET MOTHERBOARD MANUFACTURER AND MODEL NAME

Motherboard Manufacturer refers to the name of a company that is producing and marketing a system board for computers.

Motherboard Model Name  may include series and model number of a motherboard.

Knowledge about a motherboard manufacturer and its model name will give a computer technician an information on the following:

1.Motherboard Manufacturer Website- It is important for a computer technician to know where to download a specific motherboard manual, drivers (device software) for motherboard devices, update for BIOS and other applications.

2.Compatible devices – The technician will easily identify compatible CPU, RAM, Video Card, HDD and other peripheral devices for a motherboard in case of upgrading or replacing parts.

3.Compatible Operating System – The computer technician could easily identify the compatible System Software and other application software for the motherboard.

Next will give you idea and procedure on “how to get the motherboard Manufacturer and Model name on a desktop system board".