Computer Mother Board Parts

Posted in Computer Hardware | August 4th, 2010

The motherboard is the main circuit board of the system unit. It is also referred to as system
board. Many electronic components are connected to the motherboard and some components
are built into it. The processor chip and memory chips are plugged (installed) into the
motherboard. The motherboard contains sockets or slots in which electronic components are
installed. You can say that motherboard is the master circuit board in a computer.

RAM (Random Access Memory) Details on link available.

ROM (Read Only Memory) Details on link available

CMOS

CMOS stands for Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor. It is similar to RAM and is a
high-speed but it is non-volatile memory. It uses batter to reatin information even when the
power to the computer is off. The contents of CMOS can be changed very easily.

CMOS is a special type of memory, which stores the configuration information about
the computer such as information about type of disk drives, keyboard, monitorm system
current date and time, password, system startupinformation etc.

Cache Memory

Data and program instructions are moved from RAM to CPU’s registers during data processing.
It is most time consuming method and CPU has to waste a lot of time ot access data from
memory.

Cache memory is similar to RAM but it is extremely fast than RAM. It is normally used
between RAM and CPU. Cache speeds up processing speed of computer because CPU stores
frequently used instructions and data in it. When the program is running and the CPU needs a
specific data or program instructions, the CPU first checks it in cache memory. If the data is
not there, the CPU reads the data from RAM into its registers, but it also loads a copy of the
same data or instruction in cache memory. The next time the CPU uses it if required again and
saves the time needed to load it from RAM.

Epansion Slot

PC motherboard has two or more expansion slots used to add new components to
the computer. The slots hold adapter card also called expansion card. The adapter card
provides connections to peripherals. A peripheral is a device that connects to the system unit
and is controlled by the CPU. Examples of peripherals are modem, disk drive, printer, scanner,
keyboard, mouse etc.

The memory (RAM) chips are also inserted into the expansion slot to expand the size of
memory. Similarly network interface card is inserted expansion slot to connect
the computer to network and so on.

The types of adapter cards with their functions are given below.

Accelerator Card
It is used to increase the speed of processor.

I/O Card
It is used to connect input/output devices such as printer, mouse keyboard etc.

Game Card
It is used to connect joystick.

Disk Controller Card

It is used to connect disk drives.
Modem Card
It is used to connect other computers through telephone line or cable television line.

Network Card
It is used to connect other computers and peripherals in local area network.

PC-to-TV Connector Card

It is used to connect a television.

Sound Card
It is used to connect a speaker or microphone.

TV Tuner Card
It is used for viewing television channels on the computer monitor.

Video Card
It is used to connect a monitor.

In modem computer, motherboard includes all necessary capabilities and don’t require adapter
cards. For example, sound and video functions may be built into the mother board.

In the past, it was very difficult job to install a card. The computer technician had to set
switches and other elements on the motherboard. Now-a-days, computers have plug and play
capabilities. It means that a computerautomatically can configure adapter card when it is
installed into it. In these computers, you can easily plug in a device and turn on the computer.
The device is ready to use (It means device is ready to play its role).

Computer Buses

We know that data and instructions inside the computer are stored and moved from one unit
to another in the form of bits. Actually the bits are moved in the form of electric pulses.
Therefore, computer bus is defined as:

The electric paths through which computer (CPU) sends and receives data and
instructions (and also sends command signals) to and from different components
of computer are called computer buses.

The computer bus is backbone of the computer and computer cannot perform any function
without it. The computer bus is like electric wiring used to create circuits.
However computer buses are used to connect devices with the CPU.

Typically a bus consists of 40 to 150 electric wires or lines running parallel to each other. One
line can carry one bit at a time. The capacity of a computerbus depends on the number of data
lines it contains. For example a bus with 16 lines can transfer 16 bits at a time.

In the past the performance of computer buses was measured by the number of bits they
could transfer at one time. Hence, the newest 64-bit buses are typically considered the fastest
for data transfer. However performance of buses was measured according to their data
transfer rates. It was measured in Mbps (Megabits per second).

Today data transfer rate of a computer bus is measured in MHz. Every bus also has a clock
speed, just like the processor. The clock speed for acomputer bus is measured in hertz (Hz).
Most of today’s processor have acomputer bus clock speed from 100 MHz to 400 MHz (one
Mega Hertz is equal to one million ticks per second). The higher the computer bus clock speed,
the faster the transmission of data. It means that due to higher thecomputer bus clock speed,
application running and data accessing speed will be very fast.

A computer has two basic types of buses. These are:

1. Expansion buses
2. System buses

Expansion Buses
Expansion buses are also referred to as External Buses. These buses connect the external
devices such as keyboard, mouse, modem, printer etc. to the processor. Expansion buses
allow the processor to communicate with the peripherals. We connect a peripheral with the
system unit through a port on an adapter card, which is inserted into an expansion slot on the
motherboard.

The basic types of expansion buses are:

ISA Bus
ISA stands for Industry Standard Architecture. It is most common and slowest bus used to
connect mouse, model card, sound card and low-speed network card.

PCI Bus
PCI stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect. PCI is a high-speed local bus used to
connect video card, sound card and high-speed network card. This bus transfers data about
four times faster than the ISA bus. Today most of the PCs have a PCI bus as well as ISA bus.

AGP Bus
AGP stands for Accelerated Graphics Port. AGP bus is specially designed by Intel to improve
the transmission speed of video and 3-D graphics. The AGP bus provides a faster, dedicated
interface between the video card and memory.

USB
USB stands for Universal Serial Bus. In a computer with a USB, USB devices can be connected
to each other outside the system unit and then single cable attaches to the USB port. The USB
port then connects to the USB, which connects to the PCI bus on the motherboard. This bus
eliminates the need to install cards into the expansion slots.

System Buses

The system buses are also called the Internal Buses. The system buses are the part of
motherboard and connect the processor to the main memory as well as other devices that
reside on the motherboard. The system buses areclassified according to their functions as:

1. Data bus
2. Address bus
3. Control bus

1. Data Bus

The electric path through which the contents of data (or actual data) are transferred from one
unit to another is called Data Bus. Actually the data bus is a group of parallel wires. The
number of wires in the bus affects the speed at which data can transfer from one component
of computer to another. Each wire can transfer one bit of data at a time. A data bus with 8
wires can transfer 8 bits (one byte) of data at a time. The modern PCs have 64-bit data bus
and can transfer 8 bytes of data at a time. The data bus connects the CPU, memory unit and
other hardware devices on the motherboard.

2. Address Bus

We know that the components of computer are connected to one another through the system
bus. So it is important to assign a unique ID to each component. This ID is called the address
of that component. Therefore the computer bus, which is used to identify different
components of a computer as well as to specify the address of different memory locations is
called address bus. For example when a computer component wants to communicate with
other component, it specifies the address of the destination component. Similarly when CPU
wants to write some data at memory location 932, it places the address of main memory and
the address of location i.e., 932, on the address bus. When the main memory sees its address
on the address bus, it reads the data from the data bus and writes it to the specified location
within the main memory.
The capacity of address bus depends upon the number of its wires. If the address bus has 8
wires then CPU can address 256 bytes of memory, i.e. 28= 256. Now-a-days most CPUs have
32-bit address buses can address 4 GB of memory.

3. Control Bus

The electric path through which the control unit sends out control signals (commands) to
control the sequence of operations that take place while a program is being executed, is called
control bus. For example, the control unit directs the transfer of data from the main memory
to the ALU for arithmetic or logical operations. Similarly data flow between secondary memory
and main memory is controlled by the control unit through this bus.

The control bus directly connects the CPU, main memory and I/O ports. We know that many
system devices are connected to the data bus but only one of these is enabled at a time. The
CPU provides the enabling signal through the control bus lines. For example if the CPU wants
to read data from the port attached to the keyboard, it will perform this activity as follow:

 sends out the address of keyboard port on the address bus.

 enables keyboard port by sending a signal to it on a control bus line.
 reads the data from the data bus. The data is put on it by the port.

Ports

Power Supply

Power supply is an electrical component inside the system unit that converts the A.C power
into D.C power. Power Supply supplies the correct voltage or power to all parts of the
comptuer. It is a simple electrical system, which takes 240 or 110 A.C voltages and converts
them into D.C voltages of 3V, 6V, 12V and 24V. The D.C voltage is required to operate
different components of a comptuer.

Some exterals peripherals such as an external modems, speakers etc. have an A.C adapter,
which converts the A.C power into D.C power that the peripheral requires.