USB (Universal Serial Bus) 2.0 Ports: There are usually a couple of these ports located on each motherboard used for connecting pen drives and external hard drives, like Ipods or Mp3 players. PS/2 Keyboard Port (purple): This port is for a PS/2 keyboard. Memory per slot 2 GB, 4 GB, and 8 GB Configurations supported. 4 GB DDR4 at 2133 MHz (4 GB x 1). 6 GB DDR4 at 2133 MHz (4 GB + 2 GB). 8 GB DDR4 at 2133 MHz (4 GB + 4 GB or 8 GB x 1) Ports and connectors Table 6. Ports and connectors specifications External: Network One RJ45 port USB. Two USB 2.0 ports. One USB 3.0 port Audio/Video. Most computers had at most two serial ports, and they were very slow in most cases. Devices that needed faster connections came with their own cards, which had to fit in a card slot inside the computer's case. Unfortunately, the number of card slots is limited and some of the cards are difficult to install.

5. PS/2 Keyboard Port (purple) :This port is for a PS/2 keyboard

6. PS/2 mouse port (green):This port is for a PS/2 mouse.

7. 1394a Port : this port is used to connect to any firewire device. FireWire has largely been supplanted by USB. Some professional audio hardware still uses FireWire, though; you may also occasionally find higher-speed IEEE 1394b headers, but they are even rarer.

8. Optical S/PDIF Used for sound connections to home audio recievers or powered PC speakers with optical connections.

9. eSATA port(External Serial Advanced Technology Attachment): It is an external interface for SATA technologies. It competes with FireWire 400 and universal serial bus (USB) 2.0 to provide fast data transfer speeds for external storage devices.

10. HDMI Connector(High-Definition Multimedia Interface):HDMI is a digital interface for transmitting audio and video data in a single cable. It is supported by most HDTVs and related components, such as DVD and Blu-ray players, cable boxes, and video game systems.

11. DVI (Digital Visual Interface) connector : It is used to send digital information from a computer to a digital display, such as a flat-panel LCD monitor.

12. North Bridge : The northbridge typically handles communications among the CPU, in some cases RAM, and PCI Express (or AGP) video cards, and the southbridge. Northbridge is directly connected to AGP video, thus providing higher transfer rates.

13. South Bridge : The southbridge is one of the two chips in the core logic chipset on a personal computer (PC) motherboard, the other being the northbridge. The southbridge typically implements the slower capabilities of the motherboard in a northbridge/southbridge chipset computer architecture. A southbridge chipset handles all of a computer's I/O functions, such as USB, audio, serial, the system BIOS, the ISA bus, the interrupt controller and the IDE channels.

Summary :

This essay from MiniTool will introduce you with 20 major components of a motherboard together with their basic information including their functions.

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According to Wikipedia, a motherboard is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in common computers (both desktops and laptops) as well as other expandable systems. It is also known as a mainboard, main circuit board, system board, baseboard, logic board, planar board or mobo.

Motherboard Components and Their Functions

There are many components found in a motherboard. Some of them are major motherboard components while others are not. The following is a motherboard components list.

1. CPU (Central Processing Unit) chip

CPU is the electronic circuitry in a computer that executes instructions that make up a program. It is also known as a central processor or the main processor. The CPU executes the basic logic, arithmetic, controlling as well as input/output (I/O) operations specified by the instructions in the desktop programs.

2. RAM (Random Access Memory) slots

RAM is a kind of computer memory that can be read and written. It is mainly used to save data and machine code. A RAM device permits data to be read or written in nearly the same amount of time no matter where the data’s physical location is in the memory. Compared to the direct-access storage devices like hard drives, CD/DVD and magnetic tapes, RAM media is much faster for data reading and writing.

3. Southbridge/northbridge

They are the two chips in the core logic chipset on the motherboard. Typically, the southbridge implements the slower capabilities of the motherboard in a northbridge/southbridge chipset computer architecture.

The northbridge, also known as host bridge or Memory Controller Hub, is connected directly to the CPU via the front-side bus (FSB). It is responsible for tasks requiring the highest performance. Together with the southbridge, they manage communications between the CPU and other motherboard components.

4. BIOS (Basic Input/Output System)

BIOS, also called system BIOS, PC BIOS or ROM BIOS, is firmware that is used to perform hardware initialization during the booting process; and to provide runtime services for operating system and programs. The BIOS firmware is the first software to run when powered on; it is re-installed on a PC’s system board.

5. I/O port

Input/output ports are the connections between the CPU and peripheral devices on a motherboard. There are two complementary methods to perform input and output processes: memory-mapped I/O (MMIO) and port-mapped I/O (PMIO). Alternatively, you can use dedicated I/O processors, called channels on mainframe computers, which execute their own instructions.

6. USB (Universal Serial Bus)

USB is an industry standard that creates specifications for connectors, cables and protocols for connection; power supply (interfacing) and communication among computers, computer peripherals as well as other desktops. There are a great many USB hardware including several different connectors, of which USB-C is the latest kind.

7. CPU slot

A CPU slot, also called a CPU socket or Processor socket, contains one or more mechanical components that provide mechanical and electrical connections between the PCB and a microprocessor (CPU). Therefore, you can install a CPU on a motherboard without soldering.

8. PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slot

Peripheral Component Interconnect is a local computer bus for connecting hardware to a computer. It supports all the functions of a processor bus. PCI is usually been called Conventional PCI to distinguish it from its successor PCI Express (PCIe, PCI-e or PCI-E).

PCI Express is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standard. It is a general-use motherboard interface for the graphics card, SSDs, hard drives, Wi-Fi as well as Ethernet hardware connections.

This post tells you the differences between PCI and PCIe. It also shows you how to distinguish them.

9. AGP (Accelerated Graphics Port) slot

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AGP was designed as a high-speed point-to-point channel for connecting a video card (graphics card) to a computer system. Primarily, it was used to assist in the acceleration of 3D computer graphics. AGP is originally designed to be a descendant of the PCI series of connections for video cards. Yet, it was replaced by the PCIe slots.

10. ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) slot

ISA is the 16-bit internal bus of IMB PC/AT and similar computers that are based on Intel 80286 and its immediate successors during the 1980s. It was backward compatible with the 8-bit bus of the 8088-based IBM PC largely.

There once was an attempt to extend ISA into a 32-bit bus, called Extended Industry Standard Architecture (EISA). The attempt wasn’t very successful and the EISA was largely replaced by the later VESA Local Bus and the PCI bus.

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11. Parallel port

A parallel port is a kind of interface for