Motherboards
Chapter 3
Release 22/10/2010
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Objectives
 List the types of motherboards
 Identify the motherboard form factor
 Identify the components of the motherboard
 Explain the use of chipsets
 List the types of chipsets
 Configure the motherboard
 Install the motherboard
 Troubleshoot the motherboard
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Types of Motherboards - I
 Integrated motherboards – Have all peripheral
device slots, input output ports, serial and parallel
ports mounted on the board. Saves space and
cheaper
as
compared
to
non-integrated
motherboards.
 Non-Integrated motherboards – Have RAM slots
integrated on the board. All the I/O ports such as
serial and parallel port connectors, other controllers
such as hard drive and floppy disk drives controllers
are attached to the system using expansion boards
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Types of Motherboards - II
Desktop Motherboards – Used in personal
computers and desktops
Server Motherboards– Designed to offer
high-end services and supports various
redundancy technologies
Laptop Motherboards– Have very
advanced features, as compared to the
desktop motherboards
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Question for GD
Time Limit – 2 Mins
What are the different types of
motherboard?
Sl.
Types of Motherboard
1
2
3
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Form Factors of Motherboard
 Refers to motherboards physical shape, layout and
positioning of components on it
 Determines the type of system case it will fit into
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Modern Form Factor - I
Types of modern form factors:
• ATX – Popular and has best features of
LPX and AT form factors
• Micro ATX – Limited expandability and
capacity
• NLX – New addition to motherboard form
factors, easier assembly, reduced cost, space
efficiency and flexibility
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Modern Form Factor - II
BTX - BTX form factor was introduced as a
replacement for the ATX form factor in the
year 2003.
Supports better thermal management. This
form factor was introduced to support the
new emerging technologies such as SATA
and USB 2.0.
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Question for GD
Time Limit – 2 Mins
What is form factor? List the types of form
factor.
Sl. Types of Form factor
1
2
3
4
5
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Components of a Motherboard
 Motherboard contains slots, sockets and
connectors for connecting various devices
 Contains super I/O chip, slots for connecting
various peripheral devices
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Connectors – I and show from CBT
 System panel connector
 USB headers
 Digital audio connector
 MDC connector – connects to modem card
module
 Internal audio connectors – conents to CD ROM
or voice modem card
 GAME/MIDI connector
 System Management Bus (SMBus) connector
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Connectors - II
 ATX 12V connector
 ATX Power Connector
 CPU and chassis fan connectors
 Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
(SATA) connectors
 IDE connectors
 Serial port connector
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On Board Disk Drive Connectors
 Hard drive and DVD-ROM drive is connected to
motherboard using on-board disk drive connectors
 Primary connector used to connect storage
devices is the Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE)
port
 Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA)
technology is used to connect the newer versions
of hard drive
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Keyboard and Mouse Connector
Keyboard and mouse device are connected
to (Personal System) PS/2 or USB port of
computer
 Ports are located at the back side of the
system
 PS/2 port contains 6 holes and a notch in
the middle
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Other Connectors
 Power Supply Connector – Types of power
connectors used by various power supplies are
ATX power supply connector, ATX auxiliary
power connector and ATX 12V connector
 Serial and Parallel Port Connector – 9 pin serial
port connector and 25 pin parallel port connector
are used to connect various I/O devices
 Universal Serial Bus (USB) - Offers Plug-andPlay support and also supplies power to the device
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Question for GD
Time Limit – 4 Mins
List the different connectors available on
the motherboard and it’s use.
Sl. Connectors
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Expansion Slots
 Motherboard has PCI slots where you can connect
PCI cards.
 Different PCI cards include LAN card, SCSI card
and USB card
 Extend the capacity of the existing motherboard
 AGP slot is used to attach a graphic card
 PCI express or PCI-E is the latest Peripheral
Component Interconnect Special Interest Group’s
specification for the I/O bus.
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CNR Expansion Slot
 Communication and Network Riser is a slot found
on certain PC motherboards.
 Intel developed this slot to replace AMR design.
 Used for specialized networking, audio and
telephony equipments
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Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Slot
 Bus standard developed by Intel Corporation
 Used for attaching peripheral devices to
motherboard
 Slots work at 33 MHz
 newer variants are available that have a 64-bit
wide bus and work at 33 MHz or 66 MHz
 Data Transmission Rate of PCI is 133 MBps
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PCI Extended (PCI-X)
 PCI Extended (PCI-X) is a standard designed
jointly by HP, IBM, and Compaq
 Increase the performance of high-bandwidth
devices, such as Gigabit Ethernet and Fibre
Channel
 Fully backward compatible with PCI and data
transmission rate is 1GBps
 Comes in two variants: PCI-X 1.0 and PCI-X 2.0
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PCI Express (PCI-E) - I
 PCIe 2.0 doubles bandwidth from 0.25 GByte/s to
0.5 GByte/s, meaning a x32 connector can transfer
data at up to 16 GByte/s for both video cards
 PCIe 2.0 have two 32 bits channels for each GPU
(2x16), while first version only 1x16 and
operating at 2 GHz.
 PCIe 2.0 is backward compatible with PCIe v1.x.
 Having point-to-point, hot-pluggable and hotswappable system bus
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PCI-E - II
 PCIe 3.0 include a
number of optimizations
for enhanced signaling
and data integrity,
including transmitter and
receiver equalization and
clock data recovery.
 PCIe 3.0's 8 GT/s bit rate
effectively delivers double
PCIe 2.0 (5GT/s)
bandwidth.
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AGP Slot
 Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) is used to
display graphics and 3D images in efficient
manner
 Offers high data transfer speed between the video
chipset and the CPU
 AGP cards are available at different speeds, AGP
1x, 2x, 4x, 8x
 Operate in a voltage of 1.5 to 3.3 volts
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Question for GD
Time Limit – 3 Mins
List the different expansion slots available
on a motherboard.
Sl.
Types of slots
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Jumpers
 Small pins that enable you to configure
motherboard settings
 Performs different functions when it is shorted and
when it is left open, without the shunt
 Motherboard manual is a necessity when you deal
with jumpers
 Motherboards may have jumpers to set processor
type, system recovery option, over clocking and to
discharge the CMOS RAM battery
 Most of the motherboards currently available in
the market have auto jumper setup option
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Practical
 Perform the activity mentioned in Lab no.
1 in the text book:
•
To identify various connectors, expansion
slots, and jumpers on the motherboard.
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Onboard Components – I and show from CBT
 CPU socket
 Northbridge
 Southbridge
 DDR DIMM sockets
 Super I/O controller
 Flash ROM
 Standby Power LED
 Audio CODEC
 LAN controller
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Onboard Components – II
 Mouse port
 Parallel port
 LAN port
 Line In jack
 Line Out jack
 Microphone jack
 USB ports
 Video port
 Serial port
 Keyboard port
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Memory Slots
 Provide an interface for attaching RAM on the
board.
 RAM module is inserted in these slots.
 Most of the motherboards come equipped with at
least 2 memory slots.
 Maximum number of slots available depends on
the motherboard.
 Most Memory slots are Double Inline Memory
Module (DIMM) type.
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CPU Socket
 Interface that connects CPU with motherboard
 Consists of holes in which the pins of the
processor are installed
 Sockets are used with particular type of processor
 Sockets already installed on board
 Most of the sockets used are built on the Land
Grid Array (LGA) architecture where pins are
available on sockets.
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CMOS Battery
 Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS)
batteries power CMOS chip of motherboard
 Saves settings and time when computer is switched off
 Last for around 5 years
 Mostly made up of Lithium
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BIOS Chip
 Contains necessary code required to operate basic
system utilities such as the display device,
keyboard or disk drives
 POST is the test conducted by BIOS
BIOS chip
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Onboard Disk Drive Connectors
 IDE Connector - The hard drive, floppy drive and
the CD-ROM drive is connected to the
motherboard using the on-board disk connectors
i.e. Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
port on the motherboard . The connector is a
normal 40 pin connector.
 SATA Connector - Serial Advanced Technology
Attachment (SATA) technology is used to connect
the newer versions of hard drive.
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Super I/O Chip
 Controls the serial ports, PS/2 mouse, some keyboard
functions and parallel ports. The smaller, slower speed
devices are controlled by this chip.
 E.g. IT8705F, W83757 IC
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CPU Voltage Regulator
A Voltage Regulator Module (VRM) is installed
on the motherboard and regulates the correct
voltage that is needed by the CPU.
 Facilitates the mounting of different processors
with different operating voltages to be mounted on
a motherboard.
 VRM’s senses the voltage needed by the
processors from the processor itself. The voltage
required by the processor is supplied to VRM by
the processor during startup of the computer.

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Practical
 Perform the activity mentioned in Lab no.
2 in the text book:
•
To identify various onboard components, disk
drive connectors, CPU voltage regulator and
Super I/O chip on the motherboard.
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Chipsets and show from CBT
 Group of integrated circuits (IC)
 Provide interface for various devices such as
the I/O devices, CPU, memory, etc
 Control all functionalities of the computer
 Defines the limitations of the system such as
the maximum amount of memory that can be
added to the system, the processor to be used,
etc
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Chipsets
 Leading manufacturers are
• nVidia, Intel, AMD, VIA, and SiS
 The Intel G41, P45, H55 and the Q43 chipsets are the
most common chipsets available today. 64 bit
computing technology chipsets are also available today
 Modern chipset consists of IOH and ICH only
 The chipset controls the data transfers between every
component of the system
 So the chipset that you choose must support the
interface required by your CPU
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Intel-Bridge Architecture - I
 When Intel started using this architecture it started
calling the bridges as “hubs”, the north bridge
became MCH (Memory Controller Hub) and the
south bridge became ICH (I/O Controller Hub).
 When the CPU reads data from a hard drive, the
data is transferred from the hard drive to the south
bridge, then to the north bridge using the
dedicated bus and then to the CPU. Also, the
manufacturers call this bus as DMI (Direct Media
Interface) or Intel Hub Architecture.
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Intel-Bridge Architecture - II
 The speed of this dedicated bus depends on the
chipset model. For example, on Intel 925X chipset
this bus has a maximum transfer speed of 2 GB/s.
 The IOH provides support for the two PCIe
graphics slots and connects to the CPU via the
Quick Path Interconnect (QPI) bus.
 The ICH provides the support for the SATA, USB
and other system interfaces and is connected to the
IOH via the DMI bus.
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Question for GD
Time Limit – 3 Mins
Define DMI and mention current speed for
the same.
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DX58SO Motherboard Platform
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Question for GD
Time Limit – 3 Mins
What is the difference between IOH and
ICH and MCH and ICH?
IOH
ICH
MCH
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ICH
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Manufacturers of Motherboard - I
Manufacturers of motherboards are:
• Asus - Asus manufactures motherboards that
support different types of processors such as
Intel and AMD. The motherboards
manufactured by Asus support 64 bit
computing technology
• Intel - Intel motherboards are available in
various configurations and different form
factors.
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Manufacturers of Motherboard - II
 MSI - MSI is well known in for its high
performance designs and cutting edge products.
MSI's latest motherboard in the Big Bang line is a
good example.
 Gigabyte - Gigabyte manufactures motherboards
that are available for different types of processors
such as Intel and AMD. The newer versions of the
board support the latest processors such as the
dual core processors and the 64 bit processors.
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Practical
 Perform the activity mentioned in Lab no.
3 in the text book:
•
To identify make, model and chipset of a
motherboard.
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Compatible Processors and Motherboards
http://processormatch.intel.com/CompDB
for Intel products
 http://products.amd.com/enus/RecommendedMBFilter.aspx for AMD
products.
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Factors for selecting a Motherboard – I
 Form Factor – Defines size and shape of
board. Choose a case that is large enough to fit
the motherboard of the correct form factor
 CPU Support – Should support different types
of microprocessor and sockets. In the future, if
you need to upgrade your processor, you may
not have to change the whole motherboard
 Memory slots – Should have more number of
slots. To support new technology software user
can upgrade the system in the future
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Factors for selecting a Motherboard – II
 Expansion Slots –a motherboard with more
number of expansion slots can easily be
expanded for supporting the various devices
 SATA support – Allows higher transfer rates of
data between hard disk and motherboard and
should have SATA controller on it.
 Number of Ports – Should have more number
of USB and other ports to connect different
devices to the system. Depending on the type of
device to be attached to the system and the port
that is required, the board should be purchased.
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Factors for selecting a Motherboard – III
Hard Drive transfer speed and RAID
support – Should support SATA-II 300
MBps and RAID
Bus Speed – Should have higher speed of
FSB and BSB which allows faster transfer
rate of data in and out of the processor
QPI and DMI Speed – Should have higher
speed e.g. 2.5GT/s
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Configuring the Motherboard
 Configure motherboard before it is installed in the
system
 Configuration done with the help of jumpers
 Set clock frequency, CPU voltage and other
settings
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Practical
 Perform the activity mentioned in Lab no.
4 in the text book:
•
•
To install the motherboard inside a PC.
Click on the image to run the video.
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Replace/Upgrade a Motherboard
 Involves replacing the motherboard and also some
components of the system
 Factors that need to be considered before
upgrading the motherboard
•
•
•
•
•
Power Connector
Memory Support
Hard Disk Support
System Case
Keyboard – may have to use a converter
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Practical
 Perform the activity mentioned in Lab no.
5 in the text book:
•
To uninstall the motherboard from a PC.
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Troubleshooting Motherboards and discuss
from CBT
Various problems with the motherboard:
• Instability in a New System
• Motherboard has a Crack
• System does not work properly after recent
repair
• System does not start though fans are working
• When switched on, the system only beeps or
shows POST error
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Summary – I
 Motherboard is a printed circuit board that is the
most important part of a system
 Every component of the system connects to the
motherboard directly or indirectly
 There are different types of motherboard
 There are different motherboard form factors
 There are different components on the
motherboard
 Jumpers on motherboard enable you to configure
the motherboard
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Summary – II
 You can connect different parts of the system to
the motherboard using the connectors and
expansion slots
 The final solution came when the chipset
manufacturers started using a new approach: using
a dedicated high-speed bus between north and
south bridges called DMI and connecting the PCI
bus devices to the south bridge.
 Chipset on a motherboard is a group of integrated
circuits and microprocessors
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Summary – III
 You must configure motherboard using the
jumpers, before you perform motherboard
installation in the system case
 You must install CPU, fan and heat sink on
motherboard before you install motherboard
 Follow instructions in motherboard manual when
performing configuration or installation
 You must follow the instructions in the
motherboard manual when performing
configuration, installation or troubleshooting of
the motherboard
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Explorative Work
 Refer to Internet, reference books or magazine to get the
information.
 Do not copy the information provided in this text book.
 Consult your faculty for further guidance.
Motherboard
Sl.
Make
CPU Socket
Chipset
Memory Support
Available Ports (DVI, HDMI, PCIe, SATA & USB)
Approx. Cost
1
2
3
4
5
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Mind Map
Draw a mind map to summarize this chapter
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