Everything You Need To Know About "THE MOTHERBOARD" - Motherboard explained

MotherBoard - Explained

What is a MotherBoard?

picture credit- Windows Central

Hello, Guys Right after you open your Computers Casing,The Big board which holds all the components together is your Mother Board . That Large piece of silicon embedded with a lot of ICs (Integrated Chips)and provides your addition components power to work and connects them all as one, as a Mother does. Yes, this is the Motherboard. Without a motherboard, your core i9 is just a piece of junk. The motherboard is a printed circuit board and foundation of a computer that is the biggest board in a Computer Chassis or Cabin. It allocates power and allows communication to and between the CPU, RAM, and all other computer hardware components.To be in short A Mother Board is a Master Board that allows all the parts of your computer to receive power and communicate with one another. 

The Mother Board has developed a lot in recent years, The first motherboards held very few actual components. The first IBM PC motherboard had only a processor and card slots. Users plugged components like floppy drive controllers and memory into the slots.

History Of Mother Board:

The 1950s it should be noted however that these early PCBs were still a far cry from the RGB motherboard that you might have sitting in your computer right now while back then a simple device like a radio might have gotten away with using just one PCB full-fledged computers needed many circuit boards to handle different functions connected by a backplane that you might consider to be a forerunner of the modern motherboard unlike true motherboards though these backplanes tended to be dumb connections with no actual logic that consisted of little more than a bunch of slots lined up in a row so that other expansion cards could be plugged in, for example, the Altair 8800 used one slot to insert a processor another for memory and so on it wasn't until 1981

IBM's First Consumer Mother Board:

IBM Motherboard with Intel 8088

In 1981 the original IBM PC featured an Intel 8088 CPU built-in memory and actual external IO so it was far more than just a glorified bundle of wire-like smooshed together all you could connect directly to it was a keyboard and a cassette drive but it also included a handful of expansion slots that didn't look too different from what we're used to today and those slots were important because motherboards were still so simple that they didn't have features that we consider basic now like drive headers for example. until the mid-1980s either by the late 80s though engineers had fully embraced the goal of integrating more and more functions onto the motherboard and so little ICS called super i/o chips were becoming more common these functioned like rudimentary versions of a modern chipset they provided drive controllers ports for printers mice keyboards and other devices and the systems bios now that all doesn't sound like a huge deal today but super i/o chips took up less space and they were much more cost-effective than expansion cards setting the stage for full-featured modern motherboards around the same time in 1987 specifically we've got the first-ever integrated VGA graphics chips when IBM released model 50 of their almost famous personal system - unlike modern integrated GPUs though this was a chip that was affixed to the motherboard instead of being built into the CPU. IBM PC in 1994 PCI started becoming popular in consumer PCs followed by the short-lived AGP for graphics cards in 1997 and PCI Express which is still with us today in 2004 but what about onboard networking in audio well in the mid-1980s there were a number of proprietary networking protocols but since the now-familiar Ethernet was a relatively simple standard with easy physical construction it became the go-to for networking in the late 80s and again its simplicity meant that it quickly spread to PC motherboards in the early 1990s and although sound cards also started appearing on the market in the late 80s and early 90s and we had little internal speakers that could emit beeps and bleeps for a while we didn't see true fully-functional onboard digital sound hit the mainstream until 1999 when Intel included the AC 97 standard in its 810 chipset which incidentally was also the first Intel chipset to include integrated graphics 

 Modern Motherboards:

PC motherboard the stage was set for refinements made possible by decreasing costs and the continued miniaturization of components not to mention an increase in processing capacity to handle lots of different features meaning that these days even small form-factor motherboards feature RGB headers premium power delivery and Wi-Fi and of course having multiple I/O ports , PCI slots, etc also the old legacy BIOS (Basic Input Output System) screen was designed simple as UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) which is much easier to understand and to tweak some tunes for our PC's

MotherBoard Sockets or Components:

Each type of motherboard is designed to work with specific types of processors and memory, so they are not capable of working with every processor and type of memory. However, hard drives are mostly universal and work with the majority of motherboards, regardless of the type or brand. 

 Here are some Main Basic ports or Components of A MotherBoard. 

CPU Socket:

AM4 socket for AMD

The socket for the microprocessor determines what kind of Central Processing Unit (CPU) the motherboard uses. 

The chipset is part of the motherboard's logic system and is usually made of two parts -- the northbridge and the southbridge. These two "bridges" connect the CPU to other parts of the computer. 

BIOS:

The Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) chip controls the most basic functions of the computer and performs a self-test every time you turn it on. Some systems feature dual BIOS, which provides a backup in case one fails or in case of error during updating.

  The real-time clock chip is a battery-operated chip that maintains basic settings and the system time.

PCI slots:

PCI Slots

Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI)- connections for video, sound and video capture cards, as well as network cards

Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) - dedicated port for video cards.
Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE) - interfaces for the hard drives
Universal Serial Bus or FireWire - external peripherals

Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) controllers allow the computer to recognize multiple drives as one drive. 

SATA (Serial ATA) connectors and SATAe connectors for Storage devices.

PCI Express is a newer protocol that acts more like a network than a bus. It can eliminate the need for other ports, including the AGP port. 

Rather than relying on plug-in cards, some motherboards have on-board sound, networking, video or other peripherals.

 RAM Slots or DIMM slots:

They are slots used to plug in our DRAM. To know more about RAM check our post here.

 

 

 

How to Buy A MotherBoard?

Yes in Basic MotherBoards are used to connect all our GPU, CPU, RAM, etc But If you Look through your Amazon Page, Youll find those confusing terms and various motherboards listed, Confused? , Don't worry let's get it done. 

First Decide What Kind of Rig you're going to build, Whether its a Gaming Build Or just Office PC or A workstation used for Editing Videos . because Each Purpose Needs separate Configurations, Not only by CPU, GPU, and amount of RAM you require, The motherboard also plays an important role in your Build. 

Opt for a higher-end Mother Board with SLI support, RAID, and higher memory support, If you're aiming for a Workstation. 

If you're a gamer go for gaming motherboards with all fancy RGB lighting and multiple ports for your Multi GPU setup, Etc. Also, most of the  Gaming Mother Board Supports Overclocking, to know more about Overclocking Check our Post Here. 

Make sure You Buy a Mother Board Based on your CPU Because The Cpu support Varies from Board to Board And Generation of the Chipset You Buy. You can even think of fitting an Intel Cpu in an AMD based motherboard. Yes, the Cpu sockets Varies.
The socket design and size varies in each motherboard generation as the processors get advanced. Intel uses LGA (Land Grid Array) sockets for their processors. LGA is nothing but (Land Grid Array) in which there will be contact pins on the motherboard. Thus each and every Intel processor will have no pins on them instead the pins are placed in the motherboard itself. This allows Intel to make more Contact pads in their Cpu without changing their die size. To know More About Intel Processors Click Here.  If you opt for an Intel Cpu make sure you buy a Mother Board with LGA socket. 

AMD processors are based on their AM3+, AM4, FM1 sockets based on their processors. They use PGA (Pin Grid Array) type of Sockets. PGA (Pin Grid Array) is nothing but in which there will be holes on the motherboard socket. All the AMD processors have Pins on them to fit into the holes of a Motherboard. This made the AMD processors withstand high power and they can be Overclocked easily as they can withstand additional power we apply on them. Make sure you buy any of AM4 supported motherboards if you opt for an AMD build. To Know in detail about CPU check our Post Here. 

Last but not least the Form Factor, Nowadays motherboards are made smaller and compact, If you decide to build a Computer that fits in your tiny work table opt for smaller Motherboards, But if you're gaming and doing other heavy works compact design may not help you as the size decreases you will have very less pace for cooling your computer. Which is a very serious issue. And the choice is yours, make a list of things you really need in your setup. Here are some links to Top Motherboards in the Market.

Hope this Motherboard-Explained post helped you to learn more about Motherboard, Mention your thoughts and correction in comments below, Your suggestions Really matters us the most.