Motherboards - Motherboard Components

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Motherboard

Components

Core Components of the Motherboard

-CPU Slot, this slot on the modern motherboard is used as a Slot 1 or Socket 7 architecture in most PC's. These are the two you should be most concerned with when buying a PC or building. Of course there not the only slots available for the PC but are the most dominant.

-Add in Card Bus’s, PCI, ISA, AGP, these slots make use of the sound card, Video Card, and your common modem. Make sure and by a motherboard with at least 1 ISA, 3 PCI, and 1 AGP slots available. You will find that your motherboard and wallet will be more versatile in the future.

-Memory Slots, these are commonly found in SIMM(Single Inline Memory Module) and DIMM (Dual Inline Memory Module). Most motherboards are moving towards the DIMM slot and getting rid of SIMM architecture. Look for ample amounts of DIMM slots on a motherboard. Make sure you can add a minimum of 128MB of RAM to the board.

-Chipset, your chipset will come down to what you system can handle. You will this as BIOS (Basic Input Output System) and the motherboards CACHE. Along with technologies to handle new Bus's such as AGP(Accelerated Graphics Port).

-Clock

-Ports I/O, some of the most common ports found on a motherboard are the serial, parallel, and USB. The USB is the newer member of the motherboard and is a great step forward. Look for USB devices to let your system breath a little better.

-IDE Slots (Hard Drive, Floppy, CD-ROM), you will see a myriad of slots on the motherboard for ribbon cables. These cables connect to controllers on the hard drive, CD-ROM and the like.

-Now you know what some of the Core Components are lets look at the BUS Structures. This is a good one so check it out!

Bus Structures

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