Motherboard

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Description

• A small or large circuit board inside a cabinet containing most of the electronic components.
• Everything connected to the computer is directly or indirectly plugged into motherboard. Components like CPU, BIOS, ROM, RAM, chips, and CMOS setup information.
• Expansion slots for installing different cards like video, sound, graphics, and NIC.
• Also contains RAM slots, system chipset, controllers and underlying circuit to tie it together.

Types of motherboard

Non-integrated:

• Assemblies such as I/O port connectors, hard drive connectors, CD drive connectors etc installed as expansion boards.
• Takes lot of free space inside the case because of expansion slots.
• If something goes wrong such as bend or broken pin or defective controller can be repaired with minor cost.
• Are cheap and easy to produce.
• Most of the olden motherboards were non-integrated.

Integrated:

• Assemblies are integrated or built right onto the board.
• Serial and parallel ports, IDE, CD drive are directly connected to the motherboard.
• This tends to free some space inside case and better accessibility to the components.
• Cheaper to produce but are expensive to repair.
• Fast, powerful, feature rich motherboard at reasonable price.

Motherboard form factors:

• Determines general layout, size and feature placement on the motherboard.
• Form factors such as physical size, shape, component placement, power supply connectors etc.
• Various form factors of motherboards are AT, Baby AT, ATX, Mini-ATX, Micro-ATX, Flex ATX, LPX and Mini LPX and NLX.

1) AT (Advanced Technology):

• Oldest and biggest form factor and popular until Baby AT.
• Capable of using 386 processor.
• 12' inch size and was difficult to install, service and upgrade.

2) Baby AT:

• Standard in computer industries and still being used in Pentium class products.
• CPU socket is placed in such a way that it can interfere with longer bus cards.
• Limitation over peripheral card installation.
• I/O ports are connected to pin-outs near the floppy drive which results in jumbling of ribbon cables.

3) ATX (Advanced Technology Extended):

• Improvement done in easy to use, support for current and future I/O, and also to current and future technology.
• New mounting configuration for power supply.
• Processor relocated away from expansion slots to allow full length add-in cards.
• Provides air-flow through chassis and across the processor.

4) Mini ATX:

• Commonly same as ATX.
• Just change in size from ATX= 12" x 9.6" to Mini ATX= 11.2" x 8.2".

5) Micro ATX:

• Supports current and new processor technologies.
• AGP (Accelerated graphics port) to have high performance graphics.
• Smaller in size and less power supply.

6) Flex ATX:

• A subset of micro ATX.
• Gives chance to system developers to create new personal computer design.
• Enhanced flexibility to allow custom case and board design to be manufactured.
• Small motherboard size and supports current processor technology.

7) LPX (Low Profile Extension) and Mini LPX:

• Based on design by western digital.
• Usually found in desktop pc's.
• Case are slim-line, low profile case with riser card arrangement for expansion cards.
• Riser card arrangement means expansion boards are parallel rather than perpendicular.
• This make smaller case but limits number of expansion slots to two or three.
• High quality product at low cost but makes difficult to upgrade and repair.

8) NLX (New Low Profile Extended):

• Supports current and future processor technologies.
• Also supports new AGP and tall memory technology.
• Installing and upgrading the system is easy.

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