The Motherboard - Main Components

The Motherboard - Main Components 

The Most Important Component of any computer is the Motherboard. The Motherboard is the Largest board of the computer system. it is also called system Board. The Motherboard is located on the left side of PC's case on the bottom. It is usually green sheet of fiberglass with many chips, resistors, the heart of the computer i.e  power supply and contains many other organs of the  computer system. It  also contain the memory i.e RAM and ROM and many other supporting logic circuits to make complete computer work as a proper  system. Instead of "Motherboard" IBM refers to it as "System Board" or "Planner Board" but sometime other manufacture refers to it as "Logic  Board". It accept the CPU, Memory, Various plug-in peripherals, connectors and supporting circuitry. Motherboard Defines the types of system by defining the types of processor it accepts, by the cheapest features and by its architecture.

                            IBM decides that there should be use two different types of technologies, which were being use to make personal computer. There are:-
A. BUS Based Computers
B. Single Board Based Computers



A.  BUS BASED COMPUTER

                                   These  bus based computers have use the main board as the backbone of the computer system. This Bus board contains Number of buses through which the data can be sent from one place to another and it also contain the number of slots onto which we can connect various different devices. Mainly the expansion cards are connected onto the expansions slots. In this types of bus based computer there are three Buses. These are:-
1. Address Bus
2. Data Bus
3. Control Bus


ADDRESS BUS

                          Group of lines carrying the addressing information use to describe the memory location to where the data is being transferred.

DATA BUS

                     A set of lines use to carrying the data.

CONTROL BUS
 
                          It is used for carrying a set of control signals that control the flow of data.


            These buses are provided on these boards . The main advantage of this types of the board is that, whenever any part fails, the board on which that part is located can be removed and replaced with working board, very easily and so it makes the maintenance of the system very easy. In these types of computers, different parts of a  system such as Main Processor, Memory, Display Card etc. are put on separate cards and connected to the  main system bus through the expansion  slots.



B. SINGLE BOARD BASED COMPUTERS

                                           The other approach in the computer design is a single board base system. These types of board contains all the chips and circuits to make proper system. These types of boards are easy to manufacture and design and it is  less expensive than bus based types of computers. The video games computers and home computers are generally this types of system. In this system we cannot connect any other additional device; all the devices are available on the Motherboard itself.
                     There is no option or having no scope of upgrading or adding any new device introduce in the market to the system. In this types of system if any of the components fails, the user will have to discard the complete circuit board means that we cannot repair or maintenance any of the components.
When the IBM first introduce the system in the market, they have decided that they will use the single board based computer. This Board contains all most all important parts of a computer such as main processor, memory, supporter chips etc. but at the same time it has provide an expansion slots( i.e Bus Base system) on the main board to connect new additional device to the system. Also, some common I/O devices such as display, serial-parallel interface, storage device etc are connect to the basic system through these expansion slots. so, this design gives the popularity to the whole world and it makes the system more reliable and at the same times the slots on the motherboard provides the facilities for future upgrade and maintenance of the system and it makes so easy as compared to single board based system.
      As already mentioned on the case page, the main major architecture these days is ATX. Make sure that you buy the motherboard architecture that your case and power supply supports, or that you buy the right case for your motherboard. AT and ATX motherboard, For example have different power connectors, different sizes, different  mount holes,etc but importantly, a different back panel.