Picking up where the previous entry left off, this one will cover the basics of the connectors on the rear-plate and PCB (circuit board) of the motherboard. All motherboards have a rear-facing array of ports and connections which can vary greatly. Certain motherboards also have additional ports which can be connected by pin-outs and may connect to ports on the case or to PCI brackets. Other ports that can be found on the PCB are used to connect up major hardware pieces, such as add-in cards or hard drives, as well as power connectors and CPU/Case fan control connections.
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.
Tags: 3.5mm, eSata, Ethernet, Firewire, LAN, Motherboard, PS/2, USB, VGA