Motherboard & System Unit
System Unit
The
box in which the motherboard and other
components of the computer is stored.
On
a desktop computer it’s typically a box that
contains everything except the input/output
peripherals (monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer,
speakers, etc).
On a notebook, it’s the box under the keyboard.
On some desktop units, it’s built into the screen
(iMac, HP 6000 pro, etc)
System Unit (continued)
The
system unit (usually) contains:
Motherboard
Hard
drives
Optical Drives
Power Supply
Expansion cards
Expansion ports
Motherboard
The
motherboard (aka the parent board by pc
individuals or the logic board by Apple) is a
printed circuit board to which is attached the
CPU, miscellaneous integrated circuits such as
ROM and connectors for memory, storage, video,
keyboard, mouse and other ports.
Most motherboards today are integrated with
sound, graphics, wired and wireless network
Power Supply
The
power supply suppiles power to a computer.
It converts AC power to DC and splits it off to
various voltages needed by the components of
the system.
On a notebook computer, the battery supplies
power to a converter which splits off the various
voltages. The battery is charged by an external
charger called a brick.
Expansion (controller) cards
Expansion
cards can be plugged into slots on
the motherboard (of desktop systems) to provide
capabilities not provided by the motherboard.
Since most modern motherboards have most
capabilities built in these are no longer necessary
for most systems.
Typically they are used for high-end graphics,
RAID, tv tuners.
Ports
In
the context of hardware, ports refer to
connectors between the computer and external
devices. Among common ports are:
Parallel ports – uncommon today, formerly used
to connect printers
Serial ports – also uncommon, formerly used
for mouse
PS/2 ports – used to connect a keyboard or
mouse to a PC compatible computer. These are
becoming less common
Ports (continued)
USB
port (universal serial bus) – USB 1.1, 2.0,
3.0
Firewire port – aka IEEE 1394
LightPeak (Thunderbolt)
Video ports – used to connect a monitor. There
are a variety of different connections:VGA, DVI,
Display port
Ports (Continued)
SCSI – (small computer systems interface)
primarily used for connecting storage devices
such as hard drives, tape drives, optical drives,
usually to servers. These connections are
usually internal.
SATA – (Serial ATA) typically used to connect hard
drives, optical drives internally.
ESATA is an external SATA connector.
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