Socket:

The socket is what lets you slide in a CPU, depending on which brand and type of CPU (Intel/AMD), the socket will either be a blog of plastic with lots of holes, or it’ll be a metal bracket with hundreds of pins sticking out in the middle. The way a CPU is connected to the motherboard is by pressing up the pins of the motherboard or CPU against the other, thereby creating contact between all the pins. Each CPU has a socket type, and each socket type is individual to the manufacturer of the CPU. Intel use sockets 775, 1366, and 1156 as of this article’s writing (though there’s plenty more from previous CPUs), while AMD have the AM2, AM2+, and AM3 sockets currently on the market. Each of those sockets are non-interchangeable, except for certain motherboards which support multiple AMD sockets.

For the most part, it’s a good rule of thumb to have a general idea as to what CPU to get before choosing a motherboard, or vice versa. Keep in mind that different sockets will also dictate what type of memory will be required.

Memory:

As mentioned above, most sockets only support a certain type of memory, for example, the 1366 socket only works with DDR3 memory, so all socket 1366 motherboards will be DDR3-only. The only real downside to memory type limitations (DDR, DDR2, DDR3) is cost & speed; DDR3 is faster than DDR2 which is faster than DDR, and likewise, DDR3 is the most expensive. However, the type of memory isn’t the only factor in terms of speed, as each type only has memory speeds, measured in Mhz, and in terms also have latencies which dictates the response time of read/write executions (this will be expanded in the memory article). Choosing the right memory type, with a decently fast Mhz rating & low latency isn’t the only worry though, as motherboards generally only support a certain range of memory speeds, designated in PC numbers (such as PC2-6400, PC3-12800) which don’t translate directly to Mhz speeds.

The Palm Pre is the latest of Palm’s cell phone creation, bringing with it the demise of the legendary Palm OS and birthing the Web OS, a highly advanced OS based off the idea of always being in-sync with the web wherever you go.

The basics of the phone follow the new standard set by the iPhone with an innovative interface controlled by a 3.1” capacitive high resolution (480×320) touch screen which allows users to utilize their fingers with ease and accuracy. It also sports 8Gbs of internal storage which is unfortunately not expandable, and is powered by a 600Mhz ARM CPU with 256Mbs of RAM. This gives the Pre a significantly powerful platform from which to drive their new WebOS which we’ll touch upon a bit later.

The rest of the Pre’s specs are fairly industry standard with CDMA and GSM support, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, a MicroUSB port, b/g WiFi with support for WPA, WPA2, and 802.1X authentication, it also has an aGPS module, and runs off a 1150mAh Li-ion battery which is removable. It sports a 3.5mm headphone jack, has a proximity and light sensor, an accelerometer, and a physical slide-out QWERTY keypad.

Hardware-wise, the Pre gives a great amount of flexibility to its users, carrying all of the latest industry standards, as well as providing both a keyboard and touch screen method of navigation and entering text. However, apart from being the highest-end phone in terms of circuitry, the Pre doesn’t introduce anything new to the table over-all; it just introduces them all in a new neat package that hasn’t yet been released. Where the Pre should really shine and set itself out from the all the other touch screen (capacitive and resistive) phones, is how the OS interacts with the phone.

Software:

The new OS is being monikered as the WebOS by Palm and like its name suggests, is heavily based off the mobile web. The OS is built off Linux source code, and is meant to be used with touch screen phones, operated by fingers, and takes it roots off current web-based languages such as HTML 5, JavaScript, and CSS. This makes it potentially incredibly easy to create applications for the OS as it doesn’t introduce a new language and merely builds off existing technology.

The way the web-based programming languages will tie into the OS and the hardware is by way of JavaScript APIs which will be readily made available once the Mojo SDK for the OS is released publically, currently it is obtainable only after being approved by signing up on Palm’s website. The easy syntax of the languages Palm selected for the OS should make it relatively simple for developers to create new applications.

In terms of the GUI, the web OS is a very simplistic, sleek, and attractive interface with smooth and rapid navigation between applications. A demo of the OS was presented at CES 2009 and showed off the Pre’s capability to run applications in the background and switch to them with a swipe of a finger without any lag time and without losing any work or text entry.

Palm also demonstrated the OS’s unique feature of being constantly connected to the internet, keeping emails, contacts, IMs, notes, documents, etc in constant sync with your main account which will most likely reside with Palm. It will also sync effortlessly with other software available on the web such as Google’s Gmail, calendar, contacts, etc. Palm is effectively creating the OS is be cloud-based as it’s called.

The downside with the OS however is, the languages that it is built off of cannot allow for intensive tasks such as games, hardware interactions, nor allow deeper interaction with the OS. This is because the languages (CSS, HTML, JavaScript) are really only used to create website designs, they are never used for anything more in-depth than a website’s layout and basic functions such as form validation or animations. Whether or not there will be a different way of truly tapping into the Pre’s hardware and into making native applications is unknown at this time. However, it is known that there will be a Legacy emulator which will allow users to run older applications which were built for the Palm OS Classic.

In all, the Palm Pre is a very promising phone, mainly because of its OS, though it’s hardware capabilities are certainly ahead of the current cell phone curve. The Pre is scheduled to hit US store shelves the 6^th of June for 199$ after 100$ mail-in rebate, on the Sprint network with a 2 year contract. There will be one major accessory that will be available which is the Palm Touchstone, a wireless charger that can charge the Pre without plugging any cables into the phone, all it requires is for the phone to be placed on the surface and it will instantly start to charge.

Learn more about the Pre here:

http://www.palm.com/us/products/phones/pre/index.html

This was posted over at PCHelpForum.com and was written by me and published with my permission over there.

Some smaller-sized motherboards, such as MITX, include a significantly smaller amount of ports on the back, but offer a lot more pin-out areas on the actual board that can be connected up to provide additional connectivity. However they also often offer a very small amount of hardware ports.

The most common type of ports found on motherboards are as follows:

-  USB (used for the bulk of peripherals on today’s market)
- PS/2 (used for older mice and keyboards)
- Ethernet (for connecting to a modem or network router)
- 3.5mm jacks for audio (certain motherboards will provide only 3, 2 being line-in, while others will include a full range of ports for surround-sound)
- Serial port (used for legacy peripherals)
- eSATA (used for some external hard drives)
- VGA/DVI (some motherboards have integrated video capabilities, thus not requiring a separate video card)
- Firewire (commonly seen on macs, an alternative to USB)

Obviously, when picking out a motherboard, you’ll want to make sure it offers a nice collection of ports that you use the most. Considering that the majority of peripherals use USB, there’s generally no such thing as having too many USB ports on the back, but it’s also good to make sure that the motherboard has a pin-out USB in the event that the case it’ll be put into has front-facing USB ports.

Network connectivity is also important, most motherboards now come with 1 or 2 ethernet ports that are capable of 10/100/1000mbps speeds, which when coupled with 10/100/1000mbps cabling and router, allows for the creation of gigabit-speed networks which in turn make speedy network transfer from computer-to-computer possible. However, there’s also another advantage if you have more than 1 ethernet port, as some motherboards will allow you to link up the ports to create dual, or triple, speed connections. Be warned though, this does not necessarily mean that you’ll be able to browse the internet faster, but it’ll make PC-to-PC transfers quicker, providing both computers have the same ethernet speed capabilities.

Ethernet isn’t the only option on motherboards though, some can come with a wireless adapter that’ll generally fit into a PCIex1 slot or have an antennae port on the back and can provide a/b/g/n networking. You’ll still need a wireless router or access point though, and can be used in conjunction with an ethernet connection.

Audio is the next major component of a motherboard’s connections, and can provide simple stereo line-out, line-in, and a microphone port, or can provide a full-range of 5.1 to 7.1 surround sound setup as well as an optical line. However, most motherboard audio capabilities are limited and can’t provide an rich or high-quality sound, but can easily be overcome by throwing in an add-in sound card into the PCI/PCIe slots.

The rest of the major ports found on motherboards include the following:

- PCI slots (used to connect up wireless & sound cards, as well as other generic add-on cards)
- PCIe slots (generally used for video cards)
- AGP slots (older video card slot)
- SATA connectors (for hard drives and/or optical drives)
- IDE/Floppy connections (for use with older hard drives and optical drives as well as floppy drives, floppy connectors are a bit smaller)
- Power connections (necessary to turn the computer on)
- Fan connectors (used to allow the motherboard to power and regulate individual fan speeds to maintain optimal temperature-to-noise levels)
- RAM slots (used to connect up memory modules)

Generally speaking, most modern computers hardly make use of the majority of these slots (PCI, PCIe, IDE mainly) and if the computer is just for browsing, then the amount of connectors shouldn’t really matter. However, for those looking for performance will want to make sure they have a decent selection of PCI and PCIe slots, especially PCIex16 slots for video cards (you’ll need 2 to set-up dual video cards) as well as a good selection of SATA2 ports for hard drives.

Most affordable motherboard (50-100$ range) will offer a decent amount of the above-mentioned ports and will be sufficient for most usages ranging from word processing, web usage, media center, and casual gaming. However for slightly higher needs such as mainstream gaming with superior graphics, video/3D model processing, or network/internet server, then larger motherboards offering more ports (100$+ range) will generally be better suited and offer a much more versatile setup for expanding the system later on.

First of all, not all motherboards are the same size, there are many different factors, the most typical is the ATX factor, but there’s also MATX, EATX,  and MITX (and a few others that aren’t as common). Keep in mind this is only in terms of desktop-class motherboards, server and laptop motherboards have different sizes still.

Picking the right size motherboard depends on your needs, if you’d like a small computer, then MITX is probably better suited, if however, size matters note, an EATX or ATX motherboard is preferable. Not all cases support all sizes, and not just because of case size, but rather because of mounting points on the case’s motherboard tray, you’ll also want to keep in mind that certain motherboards coupled with certain cases may make adding long video cards a real pain or maybe even render it impossible to fit everything properly.

However, size does not mean quality, as different motherboards use different chipsets (Southbridge and Northbridge) which in turn dictate what peripherals and hardware are supported, such as: CPU type (AMD/Intel), CPU socket (LGA775, AM2, etc), RAM type support (DDR2 800, DDR2 1066, etc), power connections, circuitboard layout, capacitors, expansion slots (PCI, PCIe, or even AGP for older boards), USB ports, Firewire (if any), Audio, etc..

Since this post is only about a very brief overview on motherboards, the next few posts will talk about hardware in groups (video, sound, networking, etc) as well as the software aspect (BIOS).

PSUs output ranges from as low as 100W to 2,000W+, and varies in how much amps it delivers on the 12v rails. These values are very important when you think of your PSU, the maximum output of your PSU will directly determine what sort of hardware you are able to fit inside your computer. The amps on the other hand, will directly affect what kind of graphic card you are able to fit as more powerful cards require more power, both in watts and in amps.

However, you have to be aware that though your PSU is rated, for example, at 600W, that doesn’t necessarily mean it actually draws 600W from your wall socket. The power conversion from volts to watts is not a 1:1 ratio, it’s entirely dependent on the manufacturer and the efficiency of the PSU. Most likely your PSU will have roughly a 60-75% efficiency rating at converting volts to watts. This is not a set value, it fluctuates depending on the load being put on the PSU, the more you approach the PSUs maximum output, the more the efficiency drops, so the more it draws, in effect this means that the PSU is always drawing more power then it’s output. There is an easy way to avoid this though, as there’s a new certification for PSUs, which certifies them as “80 plus” which means they are certified to have an 80% or higher efficiency rating at all times and thus helps save conserve power.

While on the topic of power, the amount you need to run a computer is generally a lot less then you may think, generally speaking, a 300-450W PSU will do just fine for a decent system (dual core processor, 2Gbs of ram, mid-range graphic card, a few hard drives,..).

Your PSU is also a piece of hardware you do not wish to go cheap on, as cheap, and therefore low-quality, parts have a tendency to fail or go out with a bang, and that generally means a nice power surge throughout your power cables inside the case, which can very easily short any component connected to the PSU.

Let’s also get something straight, a lot of people have a tendency to refer to Windows based computers as a PC, and OSX based computers as Macs. Although it is true that the entire computer is built by Apple in the Mac’s instance, the word “PC” is an acronym to “Personal Computer” thus I’m sure you’ll agree this fits the description of computers of all kinds.

So now that that’s been established, let’s get into the overview:

There’s several main components that make up a computer. They are as follows:

1. The Power Supply Unit (PSU)
2. The motherboard
3. The Central Processing Unit (CPU)
4. Memory (RAM, or Random Access Memory)
5. Optical drive(s) (Optional)
6. Hard drive
7. Graphic Processing Unit (GPU, or sometimes as a stand-alone video card)

There can be several other add-on cards and hardware added to it, but those are the core list of components required to create a computer. And yes, laptops have all those components in them, just in a significantly smaller package.

However, both desktops and laptops are contained within a case, either made of acrylic, plastic, steel, aluminum, or other materials. Cases vary in different sizes, colors, strengths, etc. Different cases will give different benefits, so it’s important to choose one which is suited for what you wish to use your computer for.

Over the course of the next few weeks, more entries will follow going more in-depth about each component and talking about the main technologies used within each component and what they do. There will also be entries explaining how each of these technologies communicate and work together.