The motherboard (system) is designed to maintain communication between the electronic components of the computer and connect peripheral equipment. It can connect a sound card, video card, network card, hard drives, solid state drives, TV tuners and other components.
Main functions
What is a computer motherboard for? It is one of the most important parts of the electronic system. It combines many important components of an entire PC, including a central processing unit (CPU), memory and connectors for input and output devices. This is a kind of skeleton on which many different computer components are placed. External devices are connected to its connectors.
You can formulate the question in another way. What is the motherboard responsible for? It ensures the operation of devices, controls the supply of power to them, transmits instructions for interaction and receives responses from them. It controls the flow of data exchanged between computer components.
What role does it play?
What is affected by the motherboard? Of course, it affects the operation of all components of the computer. She is his "heart." Without it, it is impossible to imagine the work of the entire system, or rather, a computer simply cannot function without it.
Components
To understand how the motherboard works, you do not need to know every element of it. You need to understand the functions of the most important of them:
- Socket - the CPU socket is inserted here. Modern high-speed processors generate a lot of heat, so a radiator and holes for installing a fan are placed around the seat.
- Power Connector - Designed to distribute energy between the central processor and other components.
The figure shows the motherboard ASUS and its main components are marked:
- Connectors for RAM.
- The chip, which is the interface between the central processor, RAM and other components. It is called the north bridge. To cool this chip, a large radiator is required.
- The second chip with I / O functions. It does not connect directly to the CPU, but to the north bridge. This I / O controller is called the south bridge. He and the north bridge come together and are called the chipset (chipset). He and the connectors are the basic elements that determine what the motherboard in the computer is for.
- Several connectors in the form of connectors that form a physical interface between the motherboard and input / output devices. These connectors are controlled by the south bridge.
- One or more slots for hard drives. The most common interfaces for hard drives are IDE and SATA.
- A read-only memory chip (ROM) containing firmware (instructions) for starting a computer system. It is also called the basic input / output system (BIOS).
- Video card slot. There are several different types of them, among them - AGP and PCIe.
- Optional PCI slots for connecting peripherals.
In order to make it easier to answer the question of why a motherboard is needed in a computer, let us consider in more detail its main components (including those that are installed directly on it).
Microprocessor computer
He is the brain of the computer. The board is responsible for calling, decoding and executing program instructions, mathematical and logical calculations.
The motherboard has only one socket for installing the processor. The socket must match the type of component being installed.
RAM
Chips OP are designed for temporary storage of dynamic data in order to improve computer performance during operation.
In other words, this is a computer workstation into which active programs and data are extracted. As a result, the processor accesses this component and spends less time to obtain the necessary information.
RAM is volatile. This means that it loses its data after turning off the computer. In turn, hard drives are non-volatile types of memory. They do not need a power source to store data.
If the computer is turned off correctly, all the information in the OP is returned to the permanent storage on the hard drive. At the next boot of the PC, the operating system (OS) is automatically loaded into the RAM from the hard drive.
Basic Output I / O
The BIOS is a read-only memory device containing low-level software designed to control the system hardware and act as an intermediary between them and the OS.
To work with computer hardware, the BIOS implements an application programming interface (API). It is used by the boot loader to work with computer devices until the operating system drivers load.
CMOS Battery
The motherboard has a separate memory unit, which is powered by a battery. This object is a microcircuit having a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) structure and designed to save the system configuration when the computer is turned off.
For normal operation of devices with a CMOS structure, a small amount of energy is required. Therefore, a battery for these purposes can last for several years.
CMOS memory stores the following computer configuration information:
- type of hard drive;
- processor data;
- current date and time;
- serial and parallel port information;
- energy saving settings;
- Auto configuration data (plug and play).
Defining a motherboard model
How to find out which motherboard is in the computer? There are several ways to do this. The most reliable is to open the system unit and read the name of the board. As a rule, the abbreviation of the model is the largest inscription on the board, and you can read it without removing the device from the system unit. Most often, the inscription is located near the processor.
The second method is suitable for lazy users who do not want to go for a screwdriver. You should enter two commands on the command line in sequence:
- wmic baseboard get Manufacturer;
- wmic baseboard get product.
After the first, information about the manufacturer will be displayed, and after the second - the model of the motherboard.
The third way is to use special programs for testing computer equipment, for example, AIDA-64 and CPU-Z.
CPU Model Definition
To find out which processor on the motherboard was installed, by analogy with the definition of its model, you can use one of several methods:
- look in the "Control Panel" (section "System and Security", subsection "System");
- look in the "Device Manager";
- use the utility AIDA-64, CPU-Z or another.
To display the list of equipment, activate the "Start" button and enter "Device Manager" in the search bar. Click on the plus sign near the menu item "Processors". Information with the name of the CPU is displayed. Moreover, if the processor is quad-core, information with four identical lines will be displayed.
conclusions
The article addressed the issues of why a motherboard is needed in a computer, how to determine the model of it and the central processor installed on it.
A motherboard is a printed circuit board on which various modular devices are located, among which the main components of the computer (CPU, RAM, hard disk) and additional devices. The motherboard provides data exchange between computer devices.