Motherboards

•Think of a motherboard as a scale model of a

futuristic city with many modular plug-in buildings,
each using power from a common electrical system.

•The motherboard is the data and power

infrastructure for the entire computer.

•Different motherboards of different vintages typically

have different form factors.

•The form factor is essentially the size, shape and

design of the actual motherboard.
A motherboard is a multi-layered printed circuit
board.
 Comparison of Form Factors
• This table is a summary comparison of the sizes of the various
motherboard form factors, and compatibility factors.

Match to Case and Power

Style Width Depth Where Found
Supply

Full AT 12" 11-13" Very Old PCs Full AT, Full Tower

Baby AT 8.5" 10-13" Older PCs All but Slimline, ATX

ATX 12" 9.6" Newer PCs ATX

Mini ATX 11.2" 8.2" Newer PCs ATX

LPX 9" 11-13" Older Retail PCs Slimline

Mini LPX 8-9" 10-11" Older Retail PCs Slimline

NLX 8-9" 10-13.6" Newer Retail PCs Slimline

 Common Industry-Standard Motherboard Form Factors
Max.
Form Factor Use Slots
BTX New-generation tower and desktop systems; likely to be the most common 7
form factor from 2007 and beyond; supports high-end systems
microBTX Smaller version of BTX; used in new-generation mid-range systems; fits the 4
microBTX or BTX chassis
picoBTX Smallest version of BTX; used in low-end small form factor, entertainment, or 1
appliance systems; fits the picoBTX, microBTX, or BTX chassis
ATX Standard tower and desktop systems; most common form factor from mid- 7
1996 through the present; supports high-end systems
Mini-ATX A slightly smaller version of ATX that fits the ATX chassis; many ATX 6
motherboards are sold as Mini-ATX motherboards
microATX Smaller version of ATX; used in mid-range systems; fits the microATX or 4
ATX chassis
FlexATX Smallest version of ATX; used in low-end small form factor, entertainment, or 3
appliance systems; fits the FlexATX, microATX, or ATX chassis
Mini-ITX Minimum-size FlexATX version; used in set-top boxes and compact/small 1
form factor systems; highly integrated with one PCI expansion slot; fits in the
Mini-ITX, FlexATX, microATX, or ATX chassis
NLX Corporate slim desktop or mini-tower systems; fast and easy serviceability; Varies
slots on riser card; largely replaced in recent systems by microATX,
FlexATX, and Mini-ITX designs
Chipsets
• We can't talk about modern motherboards without discussing
chipsets.
• The chipset is the motherboard; therefore, any two boards with the
same chipsets are functionally identical
• The chipset usually contains the processor bus interface (called
front-side bus, or FSB), memory controllers, bus controllers, I/O
controllers, and more. All the circuits of the motherboard are
contained within the chipset.
• The chipset represents the connection between the processor and
everything else. The processor can't talk to the memory, adapter
boards, devices, and so on without going through the chipset. The
chipset is the main hub and central nervous system of the PC.
• If you think of the processor as the brain, the chipset is the spine
and central nervous system.
• Because the chipset controls the interface or connections between
the processor and everything else, the chipset ends up dictating
which type of processor you have; how fast it will run; how fast the
buses will run; the speed, type, and amount of memory you can use;
and more.
• Most earlier chipsets are broken into a multi tiered
architecture incorporating what are referred to as North and
South Bridge components, as well as a Super I/O chip.
– The North Bridge - So named because it is the connection between
the high-speed processor bus (400/266/200/133/100/66MHz) and
the slower AGP (533/266/133/66MHz) and PCI (33MHz) buses.
– The South Bridge - So named because it is the bridge between the
PCI bus (66/33MHz) and the even slower ISA bus (8MHz).
– The Super I/O chip - It's a separate chip attached to the ISA bus that
is not really considered part of the chipset. The Super I/O chip
contains commonly used peripheral items all combined into a single
chip.
• Note that most recent South Bridge chips now include Super
I/O functions (such chips are known as Super-South Bridge
chips), so that most recent motherboards no longer include
a separate Super I/O chip.
Contents of MB
• Expansion Bus/Slots
• RAM Banks
• CPU socket/slot
• Chipsets
• Ports
• IDE Interface/Controller
• BIOS Chip
• CMOS Battery
System Buses
• The heart of any motherboard is the various buses that
carry signals between the components. A bus is a
common pathway across which data can travel within a
computer. This pathway is used for communication and
can be established between two or more computer
elements.
• Most of the internal system components, including the
processor, cache, memory, expansion cards and storage
devices, talk to each other over one or more "buses".
• The main buses in a modern system are as follows:
– Processor bus.
– AGP bus.
– PCI-Express.
– PCI bus.
– ISA bus.
Bus Measurement
• Bus Width - A bus is a channel over which information flows. The
wider the bus, the more information can flow over the channel,
much as a wider highway can carry more cars than a narrow one.
Bus width is measured in bits, we say 8-bits wide or 32-bits wide
etc.

• Bus Speed - The speed of the bus reflects how many bits of
information can be sent across each wire each second. This would
be analogous to how fast the cars are driving on our analogical
highway). Bus speed is measured in Hertz, typically in MHz.

• Bus Bandwidth, also called throughput, refers to the total

amount of data that can theoretically be transferred on the bus in a
given unit of time. Using the highway analogy, if the bus width is
the number of lanes, and the bus speed is how fast the cars are
driving, then the bandwidth is the product of these two and reflects
the amount of traffic that the channel can convey per second.
The table below shows the theoretical bandwidth
of most of the common I/O buses on PCs today.
Width Bus Bandwidth
Bus Bus Speed (MHz)
(bits) (MBytes/sec)

8-bit ISA 8 8 8

16-bit ISA 16 8 16

EISA 32 8 32

VLB 32 33 132
PCI 32 33 132

64-bit PCI 2.1 64 66 528

AGP 32 66 264

AGP (x2 mode) 32 66x2 528

AGP (x4 mode) 32 66x4 1,056
 Bus Hierarchy
• Processor bus - Also called the front-side bus (FSB), this is
the highest-speed bus in the system and is at the core of the
chipset and motherboard. This bus is used primarily by the
processor to pass information to and from cache or main
memory and the North Bridge of the chipset. The processor
bus in a modern system runs at 66MHz, 100MHz, 133MHz,
200MHz, 266MHz, 400MHz, 533MHz, 800MHz, or 1066MHz
and is normally 64 bits (8 bytes) wide.

• AGP bus - This is a 32-bit bus designed specifically for a

video card. It runs at 66MHz (AGP 1x), 133MHz (AGP 2x),
266MHz (AGP 4x), or 533MHz (AGP 8x), which allows for a
bandwidth of up to 2133MBps. It is connected to the North
Bridge or Memory Controller Hub of the chipset and is
manifested as a single AGP slot in systems that support it.
Newer systems are phasing out AGP slots in favor of PCI-
Express.
• PCI-Express -The PCI-Express bus is a third-generation development of
the PCI bus. The speed of PCI-Express is described in terms of lanes.
Each bidirectional dual-simplex lane provides a 2.5Gbps transfer rate in
each direction (2Gbps effective speed). Thus a single-lane PCI-Express
slot (known as x1) runs at 2.5Gbps in each direction. Some systems
support PCI-Express x4, which provides 10Gbps in each direction. PCI-
Express video cards generally use the x16 slot, which provides 40Gbps in
each direction.

• PCI bus - This is usually a 33MHz 32-bit bus found in virtually all systems
since the days of the Intel 486 CPU. This bus is generated by either the
chipset North Bridge in North/South Bridge chipsets or the I/O Controller
Hub in chipsets using hub architecture. This bus is manifested in the
system as a collection of 32-bit slots, normally white in color and
numbering from four to six on most motherboards. High-speed
peripherals, such as SCSI adapters, network cards, video cards, and
more, can be plugged into PCI bus slots.

• ISA bus - This is an 8MHz 16-bit bus that has disappeared from recent
systems after first appearing in the original PC in 1984. It is a very slow-
speed bus, but it was ideal for certain slow-speed or older peripherals. It
has been used in the past for plug-in modems, sound cards, and various
other low-speed peripherals. The ISA bus is created by the South Bridge
part of the motherboard chipset, which acts as the ISA bus controller and
the interface between the ISA bus and the faster PCI bus above it. The
Super I/O chip usually was connected to the ISA bus on systems that
included ISA slots.
Expansion Slots
• The I/O bus or expansion slots enable your CPU
to communicate with peripheral devices. The
bus and its associated expansion slots are
needed because basic systems can't possibly
satisfy all the needs of all the people who buy
them.
• The I/O bus enables you to add devices to your
computer to expand its capabilities.
• The most basic computer components, such as
sound cards and video cards, can be plugged
into expansion slots .
Types of I/O Buses
• You can identify different types of I/O buses by
their architectures.
• The main differences among buses consist
primarily of the amounts of data they can
transfer at one time and the speeds at which
they can do it. The following sections describe
the various types of PC buses.
• These are:
– ISA
– EISA
– PCI
– AGP
– PCI-Express
1. Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) Bus
– One of the oldest bus
– Slow performance (8-bits wide and runs at 16MHz
max)
– Obsolete nowadays

2. Extended Industry Standard Architecture

(EISA) Bus
– Developed by Compaq
– Didn’t become as popular as ISA because of its
proprietary nature
– key features of the EISA bus:
• ISA Compatibility: ISA cards will work in EISA slots.
• 32 Bit Bus Width
• Plug and Play
Expansion Slots on Modern Motherboards
3. Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Local Bus

• Currently by far the most popular local I/O bus

• developed by Intel and introduced in 1994
• high performance general I/O bus due to several factors
– Burst Mode
– Bus Mastering
– High Bandwidth Options
• The PCI bus offers a great variety of expansion cards

4. Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP)

• To combat the eventual saturation of the PCI bus with video information,
a new interface has been pioneered by Intel, designed specifically for the
video subsystem.
• 3D acceleration and full-motion video playback were possible
• Addressed the requirement for large memory by accessing the main
system RAM
• AGP is considered a port, and not a bus, because it only involves two
devices (the processor and video card) and is not expandable.
• Dedicated only for video cards
• Has improved speeds like 2X, 4X and 8X.
PCI Slot

AGP Slot
5. PCI Express
• PCI Express is now destined to be the dominant
PC bus architecture designed to support the
increasing bandwidth needs in PCs over the
next 10–15 years.
• PCI Express is another example of how the PC
is moving from parallel to serial interfaces.
• PCI Express is a very fast serial bus design that
is backward-compatible with current PCI parallel
bus software drivers and controls.
• PCI Express is designed to augment and
eventually replace many of the buses currently
used in PCs.
• Up to 4000MBps bandwidth.
Motherboard Manual
• The most useful part in computer assembly and
upgrading is the motherboard manual.
• No motherboard is complete without proper
documentation. It should include the following at
an absolute minimum:
– General Information:
– Assembly Instructions:
– Configuration Information:
– BIOS Manual:
 Review
1. What are different form factors of
motherboads?
2. Know the different expansion slots (shape and
size) with their corresponding speed and width.
3. Calculate the Bandwidth of a bus having 16-bit
width and 8MHz speed. What is the time
wasted in transferring 60MB data over this
bus?
4. What are the two most important chipsets
found on mainboards?
5. Know the different components found on
motherboards.