major components of motherboard

major components of motherboard

Major Components of a Motherboard

By this time, you have understood the basic types of motherboards and their form factors, let us look at the components found on the motherboard and their locations relative to each other. Many of the following components can be identified on a typical motherboard

The following section describes each major components.

• A CPU socket - this socket houses the actual CPU, directly soldered into it. There are heat sinks and mounting points for fans right next to the CPU socket because of the fact that high speed CPUs generate a lot of heat.

• A power connector to distribute power to the CPU and other components.

• Main memory slots, typically in the form of DRAM chips.

• The interface between the CPU, the main memory and other components can be created by a chip which is referred to as the Northbridge on many types of motherboards. This chip also contains a large heat sink.

• A second chip, which controls the input and output (I/O) functions of a computer, is referred to as the Southbridge. It is not connected directly to the CPU. Rather it is connected to the Northbridge and the Northbridge and Southbridge combined are referred to as the chipset.

• Slots for one or more hard drives to store files. Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) and Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) are the most common types of connections.

• A Read-only memory (ROM) chip, which contains the firmware, or startup instructions for the computer system. This is also called the BIOS.

• A slot for a video or graphics card. In this section there are many different types of slots, including Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) and Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe).

• Also essential additional slots to connect hardware in the form of Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) slots.

• Peripherals Connectors. All this connectors are the bridge between outside of your computer and the inside. External peripherals such as keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers and so on are all connected via these connectors.

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