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Computer Mother Boards

The computer mother board is the main component of any PC. It’s the biggest board that connects all components from inside the computer case, and even from outside with the help of external ports. Computer mother boards changed very little since the introduction of the first IBM-PC. There was only one significant change, when they decided to offer a larger space on the back for different integrated controllers, more specifically for their input/output ports.
The first mother boards looked like this. The only input/output device controller integrated on the motherboard was the keyboard. All the other controllers had to be added to expansion slots. Later on the Pentium 1 mother boards were not very different, but one huge change was the added support for ATX power supply and on-board floppy/hard disc controller.

Still, the only I/O port in the back was for the keyboard. The ATX mother boards came with significant changes, they had on-board sound cards and video cards (with ports in the back), printer ports, communication ports and USB ports that later became the standard for connecting external devices. This was the mATX standard:

The ATX motherboards came with more expansion slots, and most of them lacked on-board video cards.

These two standard motherboard sizes were later challenged by the mini-ITX from factor, that’s length and width is not bigger than the back panel for I/O ports and one expansion card, while most advanced models had all the functions of a standard mATX or ATX board, except all the expansion slots of course.

There were attempts to introduce even smaller motherboard form factors, but they didn’t take, because there was no space for standard connectors anymore, so users couldn’t connect any standard devices to it. These very small boards are used only by manufacturers that incorporate them in monitors, televisions, and in other small places.

Another important feature that changed over the years is the possibility to overclock the components like the processors and on-board graphics processors. At first there was the well known Turbo button that boosted processor performance by a cool 100% without causing any damage to components. The primitive 8086 and 8088 processor designs made this possible, while later CPUs, the 80386 and 80486 chips didn’t support this function anymore.

Overclocking made a comeback when some high performance chips were marketed with lower speeds, so by a couple of clicks users could unleash their full potential. This was when the last socket A processor models came out, some with 400MHz FSB and some with only 333MHz, while CPU speed was also reduced by 1/6. After that with the advancement of technologies more and more chips were able to give higher performances than with their factory settings, so today we find automatic overclocking features on mother boards. Some even offer that magical 100% overclock with specific kinds of processors (the new Pentium Dual Core on Socket LGA1156). Sockets (a set of contacts then connect the processor to the mother board) change from time to time, since the 8088 chips both Intel and AMD, the two biggest CPU manufacturers, changed their socket types about 7-8 times. AMD tried to minimize the impact on consumers, by making compatible sockets since the introduction of the AM2 socket, May 23, 2006, followed by socket AM2+ and socket AM3. In this time Intel introduced the LGA775 in July 2006, and made two incompatible changes since then with the adoption of LGA 1156 and LGA1366.