It’s not easy to build a custom PC for anyone completely new to this.
When you don’t possess enough knowledge of building a custom PC from scratch, you may run into the major problem of selecting the right PC components.
Talking about PC components, you might get confused with different types of:
✅Motherboards.
✅Processor.
✅Storage Space.
✅Memory and Other major PC components.
So, going forward in this post, I’ll provide every little piece of information you need to know before purchasing a motherboard. Let’s get started:
What does a PC Motherboard do?
First, let’s get to know what a motherboard does in your PC. A newbie needs to understand everything around the PC motherboard.
Others can jump to the next part of the post.
Now, here it is.
By definition, a motherboard is the primary printed circuit within a motherboard. In short, You can think of a motherboard as the heart of your PC.
When without a heart, you can’t survive. There’s no way, you can build a custom PC without a motherboard.
When connected, you can see the main PC components plugged into the motherboard. This looks something like this:
Working as a backbone of your PC, it helps the PC components connected to it to talk with each other.
Today, if you try to build a custom PC, you would majorly focus on main OC components such as CPU, GPU, or SSD.
But think yourself, what would you do of them if you if can’t connect them with the motherboard. Correct, right?
When to Replace a Motherboard?
- Peripherals that fail or take a long time to start up
- Your PC is forced to shut down for unknown reasons.
- Unable to switch ON the TV.
- Sensing burning smell right from your PC.
Types of Motherboards
AT Motherboard
AT motherboards have dimensions of a few hundred millimeters thus they are not advised for mini desktops since they don’t fit. Their large dimensions also make it difficult to install new drivers.
This type of motherboard uses sockets and six-pin plugs that work as power connectors.
The power connectors are considered hard to distinguish and therefore prove very difficult for people to properly connect and use. Produced in the ’80s, these motherboards lasted for quite a long period of time.
ATX Motherboard
Also known as Advanced Technology extended, these motherboards were produced in the ’90s by Intel and are considered a huge improvement from the AT motherboard.
They allow for interchangeability when it comes to the connected parts and is smaller in size compared to the AT motherboards. The connector system was also greatly improved.
LPX Motherboard
These motherboards differ from the previous boards in that they contain output and input ports at their back.
A riser card was also introduced to ensure placement of more slots was initiated and made easier. AT motherboards, later on, adopted several features from the LPX motherboards.
However, low-quality LPX motherboards lack AGP slots and instead connect directly to the PCI. The many unflavored aspects of the LPX motherboard led to the creation of the NLX.
BTX Motherboard
Balanced Technology extended motherboards were created to cope up with the changing technologies that demanded a lot of power and generated a lot of heat.
Intel, however, canceled further development of BTX motherboards in late 2006 so that they could focus on lower-power CPUs.
BTX motherboards were used by Gateway Inc, MPC, and Dell. Mac Pro by Apple uses some elements of these motherboards design systems but is regarded as not BTX compliant.
Pico BTX Motherboard
The term “Pico” is used due to the small size of these motherboards. They support a maximum of two expansion slots, although they share a similar common top half as the BTX line.
Specifically designed for riser-card or half-height applications, Pico BTX motherboards are considered as a digital line.
Mini TX Motherboard
It is a low-power form factor motherboard with dimensions of 17*17cm. Mini TX motherboards were designed in the year 2001 by VIA Technologies.
Generally, they are used in SFF computer systems because they have a low power consumption rate and cool very fast.
They are therefore widely preferred when it comes to home theater systems where fan noise could reduce the quality of the system.
Conclusion
Now that you know about the motherboards & what role they play, it’s high time for you to build a custom PC.
During this complete process, if you need any kind of help, don’t forget to ping me in the comments section given below or contact me directly via hitechgazette.com.
And remember, when setting up a custom PC, the next set up for you would be the installed operating system. So, here’s my take on whether you should install recently released Windows 11 OS on your PC.
That’s all for now. If you found this post to be helpful then do share it with your friends or family who’s looking to build a custom PC.
