A system board is the main board of the computer; a system board is commonly called mother board.
Form Factors of System Boards:
The shape and size of system boards have changed over time. Here are some of the different form factors of system board.
- ATX (Advanced technology Extended) – processor and memory are at right angle to the card slot
- Micro ATX – like ATX but smaller, has some limitation
- New low profile Extended (NLX) – expansion cards are placed sideways on a riser
- Balanced Technology Extended (BTX) – introduced in 2003 by intel and designed to replace ATX.
Components of System Board:
Various components of system board include:
- Memory slot (e.g RIMM, DIMM)
- Processor sockets
- External cache memory
- Bus architecture
- Bus slot
- Chipset
- BIOS/CMOS/ Firmware
- Riser card
Latest System Board Components:
Most system boards these days are integrated with
- Sound
- Video
- USB & IEEE 1394/Fireware
- Serial/parallel
- Network interface card
- Modem
- Disk controller – SATA, SCSI
Slots on System Board (Motherboard):
All system boards have some combination of expansion slots. These slots are used to insert card that increase the capabilities of the computer.
- ISA: industry standard architecture, made before 1997, not used much these days
- AGP: accelerated graphic port, used to insert video cards.
- PCI: peripheral components interconnect, most popular slots used today
- PCIe: PCI Express, faster than PCI.
- AMR: audio modem raiser
