Mekelle University

Mekelle Institute of Technology

PC Hardware Troubleshooting (CSE 501)
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Lecture – 1
Inside The PC
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Main Components of Motherboard
• Processor Socket
• Memory Slots
• Chipset
• Bus Architecture
• Firmware
• BIOS
• CMOS
• Motherboard Connectors
• Adapter cards Slots
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Mother board :
 Motherboard is the Printed circuit board and it is the main
component of the system, every component internal or external
connects directly or indirectly to motherboard.

o It is also known as mainboard or printed circuit board,

system board.

o It is made of fiberglass brown or green typically with a

meshwork of copper lines these lines are electronic circuits
through which power, data, and control signals travel.

o Group of these lines assigned a set of functions, is

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collectively called a “bus”.
Why is the mother board chosen the first ･･･ ?

Because…

 All parts that can be installed are depended on the

mother board.

 And also CPU and RAM are depend on the

"Chipset" that is a device put on the mother board.

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Mother Board
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Processor Socket
Processor is mounted on the motherboard in a socket.
Types of Socket
• Pin Grid Array (PGA)
• Land Grid Array (LGA) (socket T)
• Ball Grid Array (BGA)
• Flip Chip PGA

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Primary Memory Slots
 172-pin MicroDIMM, used for DDR SDRAM
 184-pin DIMM, used for DDR SDRAM
 200-pin SO-DIMM, used for DDR SDRAM and DDR2 SDRAM
 204-pin SO-DIMM, used for DDR3 SDRAM
 214-pin MicroDIMM, used for DDR2 SDRAM
240-pin DIMM, used for DDR2 SDRAM, DDR3 SDRAM and
FB-DIMM DRAM

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Memory Slot
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 What is Chipset ?
 A chipset controls the system bus structures and facilitates the movement
of data and instructions between the Processor, cache memory and
internal and external peripheral devices.

 The chipset usually contains the processor bus interface (called front-
side bus, or FSB), memory controllers, bus controllers, I/O controllers,
and more.

 All the circuits of the motherboard are contained within the chipset.

 The chipset represents the connection between the processor and everything
else. The processor can't talk to the memory, adapter boards, devices, and
so on without going through the chipset. The chipset is the main hub and
central nervous system of the PC.
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 If you think of the processor as the brain, the chipset is the spine and
central nervous system.
 Most earlier chipsets are broken into a multi tiered architecture
incorporating what are referred to as North and South Bridge components,
as well as a Super I/O chip.
• The North Bridge - So named because it is the connection between the
high-speed processor bus (400/266/200/133/100/66MHz) and the slower
AGP (533/266/133/66MHz) and PCI (33MHz) buses.
• The South Bridge - So named because it is the bridge between the PCI
bus (66/33MHz) and the even slower ISA bus (8MHz).
• The Super I/O chip - It's a separate chip attached to the ISA bus that is
not really considered part of the chipset. The Super I/O chip contains
commonly used peripheral items all combined into a single chip.
 Note that most recent South Bridge chips now include Super I/O
functions (such chips are known as Super-South Bridge chips), so that most 17
recent motherboards no longer include a separate Super I/O chip.
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Chipset Block Diagram
Bus Architecture
It refers to pathways that power, data, and control signals use to
travel from one component to another in the computer.
There are different types of buses.
 Processor Bus: data and control signals to and from
processor travel through this bus it is also known as Front
Side Bus.
 Memory Bus: data and control signals to and from primary
memory (RAM) travel through this bus.
 Input Output Bus: data and control signals to and from
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input and output devices travel through this bus.
Firmware
• Firmware refers to software instructions, usually stored on
ROM chips.
• The portion of the BIOS contained in ROM chips both on the
motherboard and in some adapter cards is sometimes called
firmware, which is a name given to software stored in chips
rather than on disk.
• Firmware exits on most PC components, such as video
adapter, hard drives, network adapter and printers. These
instructions are always available, so they are not
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reprogrammed every time the computer is started.
BIOS
• BIOS is a term that stands for basic input/output system, which
consists of low-level software that controls the system
hardware and acts as an interface between the operating system
and the hardware.
• It is responsible for informing the processor of the devices
present and how to communicate with them.

Application Programs

Operating System

ROM BIOS and Device Drivers

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HARDWARE PC System Layers
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CMOS
 is another type of firmware, which stores settings such as date and
time, keyboard settings, boot sequence. Interrupt Request line and
I/O resources that BIOS uses.
 The BIOS on the motherboard is stored in a fixed ROM chip.
 Also on the motherboard there is a chip called the RTC/NVRAM chip, which
stands for real-time clock/nonvolatile memory.
 It is usually called the CMOS chip because it is made using CMOS
(complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor) technology.
 When you enter your BIOS Setup, configure your hard disk parameters or other
BIOS Setup settings, and save them, these settings are written to the storage
area in the RTC/NVRAM (otherwise called CMOS RAM although not
technically accurate) chip.
 Every time your system boots up, it reads the parameters stored in the CMOS 23

RAM chip to determine how the system should be configured.

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 Mother Board Connectors
• All of the components of a computer directly or indirectly

connect to motherboard and some are in-built.

 On Board Connection: here component is fixed on to board
using Slots and Sockets on mother board.
o Example Processor, RAM, Network card, AGP card etc.

 Internal Connection: Components inside the System case

connects to mother board using connectors.
o Example Hard Disk Drive, CD/DVD Drive, etc.

 External Connection: Components external to the system

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case are connected through back-panel.
 Cont. …
 PCI Slots (Peripheral Component Interconnect): PCI is bus
to connect the expansion cards like network card, modem
card, video card etc. .
 PCI Express (PCIe): this slot is as PCI but with numerous improvements
such as maximum system bus throughput, high speed, and low pin count.

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PCI E Slots
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AGP Slot
• AGP Slot (Accelerated Graphics Port) is a high-speed
point-to-point channel for attaching a video card to a
computer's motherboard, primarily to assist in the
acceleration of 3D computer graphics.
• It is more a high performance point-to-point connection used
only by video cards. But now AGP Cards are connected in to
PCIe Slots.

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Cards for different slots
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 AMR, CNR, ACR Slots
• AMR (Audio Modem Riser), CNR (Communications and Network Riser)
and ACR (Advanced Communications Riser) are slots that you can find on
your motherboard that have the same goal: to install HSP (Host Signal
Processing) devices to your PC. These devices can be modems, sound
cards and network cards.

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AMR,CNR,ACR Slots
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Power Connectors
• Power Connectors: Power Supply (SMPS) supplies power to
mother board. Different Form factors of power supply are
available for desktop computers, such as
‾ ATX, BTX, LPX, microATX , Flex ITX.

• ATX (Advanced Technology Extension) is widely used.

• The ATX specification requires the power supply to produce
three main outputs, +3.3 V, +5 V and +12 V.
• The +5V level is used by the IC devices on the system board
and adapter cards.
• The +3.3V level is used by the microprocessor.
• The 12V levels are typically used to power the motors used in
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hard disk and floppy disk drives.
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Power Connectors
ATX Power Connector

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Parallel ATA Connector (PATA)

• It is 40 Pin connector. A ribbon cable connects the Hard disk

drive and CD/DVD Drive to the interface, as shown in the
figure below.

PATA Connectors
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Serial ATA (SATA)
• SATA is the High Speed Interface with seven conductors,
SATA ribbon cable can be of 1 meter, it enables Hot-plugging.
Figure below show cable and connector on motherboard.

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SATA Connectors
 Back Panel Connectors
• ATX boards have a unique double-high connector area for all the
built-in connectors on the motherboard.
• When the computer is mounted, those motherboard parts show up at
the computer case back panel. They are used to plug the mouse,
keyboard, monitor, printer, sound and any other peripherals
you may have.

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Ports (Back View)

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 End of Lecture one

Next lecture:
Monitor & BUS Structure

Thank you !!
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