Among the types of boards, ATX and Micro ATX are the most common designs we often see in the current computers. Expandability, upgradability, low cost makes ATX boards accepted in the current systems trend.
Computer motherboard can be also classified based on the processor socket type it takes. Not all boards are compatible for all the CPUs. It is CPU specific. Before buying, you need to make sure that a motherboard supports the CPU you choose.
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The following are among the popular main board types based on CPU socket types:
Socket A – for AMD and Durons processors
Socket 370- for Intel Pentium III and Celerons
Socket 378 – for Pentium 4 processors
Socket T
How do you know whether your board is ATX or not? You surely can know by observing two things on your board.
The PCI slots are directly fitted on the system board
You see double high connector area on the back panel of your computer (the above image is a typical micro ATX main board)
How do computer parts connect each other?
All the components in a computer connect each other via system buses. A bus is a common pathway used to transfer data between the independent components. Data travels across these buses at different speeds.
Commonly, there are two types of buses
• Processor bus
• Input/Output bus (I/O bus)
The processor bus, also called Front Side Bus (FSB) connects CPU with cache or memory. The connection is facilitated by the chipset called North bridge. FSB is the highest-speed bus in a computer system.
The other type of bus is input/output bus. This bus embraces more than two types though it operates at the lowest speed than FSB. The AGP (accelerated graphics port) and the PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) bus types are among I/O bus.
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