Personal Computer System Components Part 1

Identifying Components of Motherboards

• Motherboard - the spine of the computer
• a.k.a. system board or planar board
• Connects together all the other components of  a PC
• Two major types of system boards
• Nonintegrated - all the major assemblies are installed as expansion cards
• These are difficult to find nowadays.
• Integrated - most of the components that were previously installed as expansion cards are now integrated into the circuitry of the motherboard.
• Integrated motherboards are cheaper to produce but expensive to repair as the whole motherboard must be replaced when one component breaks.

System Board Form Factors

• ATX - Advanced Profile Extended
• The processor and memory are at right angles to the expansion cards and are in line with the fan, allowing the processor to run cooler.
• This is the primary motherboard in use today.
• microATX
• Uses the same component placement design as ATX motherboards but has a smaller footprint.
• Has fewer memory modules, headers, expansion slots, integrated components, and chassis bays.
• Was designed for lower wattage power supplies.
• LPXe
• Lack formal standardization and its riser card interfaces varied from vendor to vendor. 
• Was popular in the 1990s until the advent of the Pentium II processor and the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP).
• Was inadequate at cooling and accommodating high pin counts.
• NLX - New Low-Profile Extended
• Uses riser cards to place the expansion slots sideways on the motherboard so that the reduced vertical space of the low-profile case is used optimally.
• Was designed to replace LPX but never became as widely used as LPX was.
• BTX - Balanced Technology Extended
• Was designed by Intel.
• Was met with resistance by customers who foresaw ever rising prices and manufacturers who was increased research and development expenses  and greater potential profit loss.
• Lined up the components that produced the most heat between air intake vents and the power supply's exhaust fan and used a passive heat sink to cool the CPU and other components.