Saturday, October 18, 2008

Diagram of Computer Motherboard

The primary component of a computer is the motherboard (sometimes called the "mainboard"). The motherboard is the hub which is used to connect all of the computer's essential components. As its name suggests, the motherboard acts as a "parent" board, which takes the form of a large printed circuit with connectors for expansion cards, memory modules, the processor, etc.

The motherboard includes some on-board components, meaning that they are integrated into its printed circuitry:

* The chipset, a circuit which controls the majority of resources (including the bus interface with the processor, cache memory and random-access memory, expansion cards, etc.)
* The CMOS clock and battery,
* The BIOS,
* The system bus and the expansion bus.

What's more, recent motherboards generally include a number of onboard multimedia and networking devices which can be disabled:

* integrated network card;
* integrated graphics card;
* integrated sound card;
* upgraded hard drive controllers.

The NorthBridge is a chip on the motherboard that relays information from the RAM and/or video card to the CPU. The Northbridge also links with the SouthBridge which controls your hard drives, sound card, DVD drive and other ports such as USB for your mouse and keyboard.

For the most part, all modern motherboards contain at least a 5.1 surround sound (5.1 surround sound is a front center, front left, front right, rear right and rear left speakers with a subwoofer) card built in which makes it 1 less item to buy.

Remember, not all motherboards look like this. Here is mine.

A: CPU slot
B: Northbridge
C: Southbridge
D: RAM slots or DIMMs
E: SATA
F: 24-pin power connector to power supply
G: IDE connector
H: Floppy drive connector
I: Power connectors for case
J: PCIe16 slots (blue)
K: PCI slots (white)
L: PCIe4 slot (black)
M: USB/Firewire connectors for case
Z: I/O Ports