What Is The Function Of A Motherboard

What is the main function of a motherboard?

At a high level, the motherboard in a computer connects the different components of a computer to the central processing unit so that it can process desired user requests and provide the results.You can think of a motherboard like the spinal cord in animals; it connects the muscles, organs, and sensory systems to the brain. The motherboard connects the GPU, storage, and memory to the CPU.Modern motherboards do more than this, they also have components integrated in them to provide audio output, they store system settings to support the other components in BIOS/EFI, and usually they have built in communications components (USB, Ethernet, Serial connections).

What is the function of PCI slots on motherboards?

Ah, finally a question I can sink my teeth into. That is an excellent question. What is the function of a PCI slot? Well, congratulations sir! You have used the proper wording in asking your question. Most people would ask this by saying: “What does a PCI slot do?”, which is slightly different than “What is the function of a PCI slot?” (The answer to the first question, by the way, is absolutely nothing by itself.) You obviously know what a motherboard is. It holds your CPU and chipset, and provides a common interface for other components of the computer. A PCI slot is just an extension of this purpose. PCI stands for Peripheral Component Interface (or interconnect, depending on who you talk to). This means that it allows you to insert expansion cards into your computer. These can come in the form of sound cards, RAID cards, SSDs, graphics cards, Coprocessors, and several other functional computer parts. Basically, in the olden days of computers, if you wanted to expand the functionality of your computer, you had to buy a part made specifically for that computer. Even different generations of the same computer sometimes didn’t work together. Hence the PCI slot. The function of a PCI slot is to provide a common interface that can be adapted for virtually any use. It allows you to design an expansion card and have it work out of the box with a computer (assuming you don’t have any conflicts on the software side. PCI has begun to die out quite a bit though, and has been succeeded by PCI Express. There is a very big difference between the two. PCI was a parallel interface, which means that it dealt with large amounts of data by splitting them up and sending them at a low speed. PCI Express, in contrast, is a serial interface, which means that it sends them one at a time, really fast. Imagine that you have 20 people who all have to cross a river. In a parallel interface, 10 of the people will cross at once. Each one has a very specific landing point. However, when they are crossing, inevitably some will get mixed up in their landing spot, and will have to cross again. In a serial interface, they all line up single file and cross as fast as is possible. This way, they always arrive in the intended order, and nobody will have to cross again. This makes the crossing faster, even though in theory parallel communication is faster.

What is the function and location of the motherboard?

Location: Centre of your case, usually situated at the rear where you can see the back I/O ports.Function: Hold the CPU in place, provide power to the CPU and create a network for other parts to function properly. In short- its basically your head. It holds the brain and it connects to other “ports” of your body.

What are the functions of a computer's motherboard?

Having a motherboard in your PC is somewhat analog to having a skeleton in your body, nothing will work without it. But a motherboard is so much more, so lets go in steps:It has all the connectors for the rest of the parts to come together (this is my skeleton analogy). The motherboard holds the CPU, the memory, has the power connectors for the PSU, has the SATA connectors for the Hard Drives and Optical drives, USB, PCI and PCIe for your video card, sound card, etc.It holds the circuitry to power both the CPU and the RAM and interfaces them together and makes available the rest of the computer for them. It also carries the PCIe lanes and powers them.It has the DMA (Direct Memory Access) chip on it which is responsible for transferring data across different parts of the computer without CPU intervention. This lets the CPU make better use of its speed other than handle the relatively slow transfers.It also holds the BIOS and manages the computer POST and boot process.And in a lot of models even has a video card integrated into it.I don't have the time to go into detail about every single thing it has and does but you can look up most of what I listed in Wikipedia for more detail.TL;DR; motherboards are the cornerstone of every single PC out there.

What is the function of capacitors on a motherboard?

What is the function of capacitors on a motherboard?The functions on modern motherboards are primarily as Decoupling capacitors. Decoupling capacitors are used to stabilize the power to each IC (Integrated Circuit) as they operate (including the CPU which use a lot. Because of inductance of the motherboard wires or power and ground planes, the power to the IC locally (within about 1/4″) varies a lot when the IC uses more or less power as it operates. So the capacitors provide a local transient power source for this operation. Depending upon the frequency of the power transients, smaller or lower values of capacitors are used. Smaller values typically need to be closer to the IC and larger ones a bit further away. Values are typically values like .01 uf, .1 uf, 1 uf, and 2.2 uf. The larger values above 1 uf are the ones that will typically fail over time when they are electrolytic types. Electrolytic capacitors start failing typically after 5 years or more. YMMV.Other uses of capacitors other than decoupling may be for audio signal filtering, audio amplifiers, power regulation (inside the PSU), crystal circuits (mostly old motherboards and RTC) etc.

What is the function of the northbridge of a motherboard?

In Intel's last several CPU families, the northbridge connects the CPU to other components that run at or near to the same speed as the CPU. This would be things like the GPU and memory. The southbridge is connected to the northbridge and is used to connect slower-speed devices like USB ports and SATA ports. These operate at a fraction of the speed of the CPU.