1.

PCI SLOT (Peripheral Component Interconnect) : PCI slots are used to Insert or install
Add-on cards, such as LAN cards, Sound cards, Capture cards and TV tuner cards. There are
usually anywhere from 1 to 6 PCI slots available on the motherboard(above board has 2 PCI
slots. ), they have decreased in number and are being replaced by the PCI Express 1x slots.

2. PCI-E 16x Slot : the most common slot for Graphics cards, the PCI Express 16x slots provides
16 separate lanes or data transfer. These are the 16x speed versions, which are currently the
fastest. PCI-E16x allows up to 4 GB/s of peak bandwidth per direction, and up to 8 GB/s
concurrent bandwidth.

3. PCI-E 1x Slot : Single slot - In the PCIe 1.x generation, each lane (1x) carries 250 MB/s
compared to 133 MB/s for the PCI slots. These can be used for expansion cards such as Sound
Cards, or Ethernet Cards.

4. Northbridge: This allows communication between the CPU and the system memory and PCI-E
slots. It is a focal Point of Motherboard and It is also called as Memory Controller Hub.

5. ATX 12V 2X and 4 Pin Power Connection : This is one of two power connections that supply
power to the .motherboard This connection will come from your Power Supply.

6. CPU-Fan Connection: This is where the CPU fan will connect. Using this connection over one
fof the power supply will allow the motherboard to control the speed of the fan, based on the CPU
temperature.

7. Socket: This is where the CPU will plug in. The orange bracket that is surrounding it is used for
high end heat sinks. It helps to support the weight of the heat sink.

8. DIMM slots: DIMM's are by far and away the most used memory types in today's computers.
They vary in speeds and standards however and they need to match up to what your motherboard
has been designed to take. The four standards of DIMM's being used at the moment are SDR
(Single Data Rate), DDR (Double Data Rate), DDR2 and DDR3. The speeds of memory can vary
between 66Mhz to 1600Mhz.

9. ATX Power Connector: This is the second of two power connections. This is the main power
connection for the motherboard, and comes from the Power Supply.

10. IDE connectors or PATA connectors : IDE full form is Integrated Device Electronics. it
supports IDE devices, such as Hard disks and CD and DVD drives. Most drives today come with
SATA connections.

11. Southbridge: This is the controller for components such as the PCI slots, onboard audio, and
USB connections.

12. SATA Connections : SATA full form is Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. These are
connect with serial ATA devices, such as Hard disk drives and CD or DVD drives.

13. Front Panel Connections: this is where we will hook in the connections from the case. These
are mostly the different lights on the case, such as power on, hard drive activity etc.

14. FDD Connection: The FDD is the Floppy Disk controller. Floppy Drive Connector is used to
connect floppy drives. It supports two floppy drives.
15. External USB Connections: There are usually a couple of these ports located on each
motherboard used for connecting pen drives and external hard drives, like Ipods or Mp3 players.

16. CMOS battery :This is the motherboard's battery, which is used to power the south bridge
and the BIOS to save the setting, data and time.

1. RJ-45 (Registered Jack 45) LAN port : This port allows connection to a Local Area Network
(LAN) through a network hub using a RJ-45 cable.

2. Analog Audio port :This port connects a tape, CD, DVD player or other audio soures.

3. VGA Port(Video Graphics Array) :VGA cables carry an analog signal as opposed to a digital
signal (ones and zeroes). Using higher frequencies, it's possible to reach a relatively high range of
video resolutions. However, video quality directly responds to cable quality, and doubly so on
higher resolutions. Due to this, the quality of a VGA image can variate notable across different
makes of cables.

4. USB (Universal Serial Bus) 2.0 Ports: There are usually a couple of these ports located on
each motherboard used for connecting pen drives and external hard drives, like Ipods or Mp3
players.

5. PS/2 Keyboard Port (purple) :This port is for a PS/2 keyboard

6. PS/2 mouse port (green):This port is for a PS/2 mouse.

7. 1394a Port : this port is used to connect to any firewire device. FireWire has largely been
supplanted by USB. Some professional audio hardware still uses FireWire, though; you may also
occasionally find higher-speed IEEE 1394b headers, but they are even rarer.

8. Optical S/PDIF Used for sound connections to home audio recievers or powered PC speakers
with optical connections.

9. eSATA port(External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment): It is an external interface

for SATA technologies. It competes with FireWire 400 and universal serial bus (USB) 2.0 to provide
fast data transfer speeds for external storage devices.

10. HDMI Connector(High-Definition Multimedia Interface):HDMI is a digital interface for

transmitting audio and video data in a single cable. It is supported by most HDTVs and related
components, such as DVD and Blu-ray players, cable boxes, and video game systems.

11. DVI (Digital Visual Interface) connector : It is used to send digital information from a
computer to a digital display, such as a flat-panel LCD monitor.

12. North Bridge : The northbridge typically handles communications among the CPU, in some
cases RAM, and PCI Express (or AGP) video cards, and the southbridge. Northbridge is directly
connected to AGP video, thus providing higher transfer rates.

13. South Bridge : The southbridge is one of the two chips in the core logic chipset on a personal
computer (PC) motherboard, the other being the northbridge. The southbridge typically
implements the slower capabilities of the motherboard in a northbridge/southbridge chipset
computer architecture. A southbridge chipset handles all of a computer's I/O functions, such as
USB, audio, serial, the system BIOS, the ISA bus, the interrupt controller and the IDE channels.

1. CPU Types
There are two different types of CPU's

1. 32-bit CPU

 1. This are the older processor .32-bit processor has a structure that can process
instructions less efficiently
 2. 32-bit processor can handle less instruction at one time
 3. 32-bit processor can only handle 4GB of memory
 4. Even though a 32-bit processor can handle up to 4GB of memory, having that much
memory on a 32-bit processor will not make it perform quicker.

2. 64-bit CPU

 1. 64-bits is larger than 32-bits, that means that a 64-bit processor can handle more
instructions in one load.
 2. 64-bit processor which can handle up to 16EB (=1 billion GB) of memory or RAM.

2. CPU Socket types

The processor socket (also called a CPU socket) is the connector on the motherboard that houses a
CPU and forms the electrical interface and contact with the CPU. Motherboards are subcategorized
by the type of processor socket they have.
The types of CPU sockets are as follows :

1. LGA Sockets: The land grid array (LGA) is a type of surface-mount packaging for integrated
circuits (ICs) that is notable for having the pins on the socket rather than the integrated circuit.
An LGA can be electrically connected to a printed circuit board (PCB) either by the use of a socket
or by soldering directly to the board. The below figure shows the LGA socket on a mother board.

Example : LGA 1150

LGA 1150 also called Socket H3, is an Intel microprocessor compatible socket which supports the
Intel Haswell microprocessor.It is a replacement for the LGA 1155 (known as Socket H2). All
socket 1150 motherboards support varying video outputs (VGA, DVI, HDMI - depending on the
model) and Intel Clear Video Technology.Chipset for LGA 1150 is codenamed Lynx Point. Intel
Xeon processors for socket LGA 1150 use the Intel C222, C224, and C226 chipsets

Contacts 1150

Processor Dimension 37.55mm x 37.55mm

Predecessor LGA 1155

The below figure shows the typical LGA 1150:

3. PGA socket : it is a type of integrated circuit packaging. In a PGA, the package is square or
rectangular, and the pins are arranged in a regular array on the underside of the package. The
pins are commonly spaced 2.54 mm (0.1") apart, and may or may not cover the entire underside
of the package.

PGAs are often mounted on printed circuit boards using the through hole method or inserted into a
socket. PGAs allow for more pins per integrated circuit than older packages such as dual in-line
package (DIP). The below figure shows the pin grid array at the bottom of a XC68020, a prototype
of the Motorola 68020 microprocessor
BGA sockets : A Ball Grid Array (BGA) is a type of surface-mount packaging used for integrated
circuits. BGA packages are used to permanently mount devices such as microprocessors. The BGA
is descended from the pin grid array (PGA), which is a package with one face covered (or partly
covered) with pins in a grid pattern which, in operation, conduct electrical signals between the
integrated circuit and the printed circuit board (PCB) on which it is placed.Soldering of BGA devices
requires precise control and is usually done by automated processes. BGA devices are not suitable
for socket mounting.A disadvantage of BGAs is that the solder balls cannot flex in the way that
longer leads can, so they are not mechanically compliant.

The example for the BGA is as shown in the below figure: