Types Of Motherboard And Troubleshooting

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Types Of Motherboard And Troubleshooting

Types Of Motherboard And Troubleshooting

  • 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.
  • 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

Form Factors of Motherboard

Read Also :- Parts Of Computer
  • Refers to motherboards physical shape, layout and positioning of components on it.
  • Determines the type of system case it will fit into.

Types Of Motherboard And Troubleshooting

Modern Form Factor

  • Types of modern form factors:

  1. ATX – Popular and has best features of LPX and AT form factors.
  2. Micro ATX – Limited expandability and capacity.
  3. NLX – New addition to motherboard form factors, easier assembly, reduced cost, space efficiency and flexibility.
  4. 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. 
  • Motherboard contains slots, sockets and connectors for connecting various devices.
  • Contains super I/O chip, slots for connecting various peripheral devices.

Connectors 

  • 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 
  • ATX 12V connector
  • ATX Power Connector
  • CPU and chassis fan connectors
  • Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) connectors
  • IDE connectors
  • Serial port connector 

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 

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

Other Connectors

Read Also :- Introducing the Front and Back Side of the PC
Read Also :- Storage Devices And Processing Devices

Storage Devices and Processing Devices

  • 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-and-Play support and also supplies power to the device 

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. 

CNR Expansion Slot

Types Of Motherboard And Troubleshooting
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



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

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

PCI-E


Types Of Motherboard And Troubleshooting
  • 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 hot-swappable system bus
  • 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.

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 

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 

Onboard Components


  • CPU socket
    Types Of Motherboard And Troubleshooting
  • Northbridge
  • Southbridge
  • DDR DIMM sockets
  • Super I/O controller
  • Flash ROM
  • Standby Power LED
  • Audio CODEC
  • LAN controller
  • Mouse port
  • Parallel port
  • LAN port
  • Line In jack
  • Line Out jack
  • Microphone jack
  • USB ports
  • Video port
  • Serial port
  • Keyboard port 

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. 

CPU Socket

  • 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. 
Types Of Motherboard And Troubleshooting
CMOS Battery

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




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

Types Of Motherboard And Troubleshooting
BIOS Chip

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. 
Types Of Motherboard And Troubleshooting
Super I/O Chip

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


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. 

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
  • 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

Intel-Bridge Architecture


  • 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.
  • 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.

DX58SO Motherboard Platform

Types Of Motherboard And Troubleshooting

Manufacturers of Motherboard

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.
  • 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. 

Factors for selecting a Motherboard


  • 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
  • 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. 
  • 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

Configuring the Motherboard


Read Also :- Definition Of Computer
  • Configure motherboard before it is installed in the system
  • Configuration done with the help of jumpers
  • Set clock frequency, CPU voltage and other settings

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 

  1. Power Connector
  2. Memory Support
  3. Hard Disk Support
  4. System Case
  5. Keyboard – may have to use a converter

Troubleshooting Motherboards and discuss from CBT

  • Various problems with the motherboard:
  1. Instability in a New System
  2. Motherboard has a Crack
  3.  System does not work properly after recent repair
  4. System does not start though fans are working
  5. When switched on, the system only beeps or shows POST error





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