Types of

Motherboard: All
That You Need to
Know
MAY 7, 2014 BY PRIYAVRAT SHARMA

A motherboard is the heart of a computer. It is the main printed circuit board present in the
computers which holds the main electronic components of the system like the central processing
unit and memory and also provides the connectors for other important peripherals. A
motherboard is a large system in itself which contains a number of subsystems like the processor
and other components. The basic function for which a motherboard is used in a computer is that
it holds the important electronic components of the system including the memory and central
processing unit and helps in establishing some sort of bridged connection between other internal
components of the system. This well written article about the parts and functions of a
motherboard will give you more information about all the important parts of a motherboard and
the functions performed by these parts in proper detail.

The understanding of the components and functions of a motherboard is also important if you
want to be able to design your own computer. As the motherboard is the most important part of a
computer system, understanding its components and working properly is very important to be
able to design and build your own computer. This course about how to build a computer will
help you in understanding the importance of a motherboard in a computer system and will
provide you with all the information about building your very own computer system.

Here we are going to study about the different types of motherboard which are available. We will
discuss each of these types in detail and will see how all these are different from each other. Let
us now start our discussion about the different types of motherboard.

AT Motherboard

An AT motherboard is a motherboard which has dimensions of the order of some hundred

The hard to distinguish power connector sockets make it difficult for many users to easily make
the proper connections and thus leading to the damage of the device.
Produced in the mid 80’s, this motherboard lasted a good span from the Pentium p5 to the times
when Pentium 2 had been started to be used.

ATX Motherboard

Advanced technology extended, or popularly known as the ATX, are the motherboards which
were produced by the Intel in mid 90’s as an improvement from the previously working
motherboards such as AT.

This type of motherboards differ from their AT counterparts in the way that these motherboards
allow the interchangeability of the connected parts. Moreover the dimensions of this
motherboard are smaller than the AT motherboards and thus proper place for the drive bays is
also allowed.

Some good changes were also made to the connector system of the board. The AT motherboards
had a keyboard connector and on the back plates extra slots were provided for various add-ons.

LPX Motherboard

The low profile extension motherboards, better known as LPX motherboards, were created after
the AT boards in the 90’s.

The major difference between these and previous boards is that the input and output ports in
these boards are present at the back of the system. This concept proved to be beneficial and was
also adopted by the AT boards in their newer versions. The use of a riser card was also made for
the placement of some more slots. But these riser cards also posed a problem that the air flow
was not proper.

Also, some low quality LPX boards didn’t even have real AGP slot and simply connected to the
PCI bus. All these unfavored aspects led to the extinction of this motherboard system and was
succeeded by the NLX.

BTX Motherboard

BTX stands for Balanced Technology extended.

BTX was developed to reduce or avoid some of the issues that came up while using latest
technologies. Newer technologies often demand more power and they also release more heat
when implemented on motherboards in accordance with the circa-1996 ATX specification. The
ATX standard and the BTX standard, both were proposed by Intel. The further development of
BTX retail products was canceled in September 2006 by Intel after the acceptance of Intel’s
decision to focus again on low-power CPUs after suffering issues such as scaling and thermal
with the Pentium 4.

The first company to use, or to be precise, implement BTX was Gateway Inc, followed
by Dell and MPC. Apple’s MacPro uses only some of the elements of the BTX design system
but it is not BTX compliant. This type of motherboard has some improvements over previous
technologies:

 Low-profile – With the larger demand for ever-smaller systems, a redesigned backplane
that shaves inches off the height requirements is a benefit to system integrators and
enterprises which use rack mounts or blade servers.

 Thermal design – The BTX design provides a straighter path of airflow with lesser
difficulties, which results in better overall cooling capabilities. Instead of a dedicated
cooling fan, a large 12 cm case-fan is mounted, that draws its air directly from outside the
computer and then cools the CPU through an air duct. Another feature of BTX is the
vertical mounting of the motherboard on the left-hand side. This kind of feature results in
the graphics card heat sink or fan facing upwards, rather than in the direction of the
adjacent expansion card.

 Structural design – The BTX standard specifies distinct locations for hardware mounting
points and hence reduces latency between key components. It also reduces the physical
strain imposed on the motherboard by heat sinks, capacitors and other components which
are dealing with electrical and thermal regulation.

Pico BTX Motherboard

Pico BTX is a motherboard form factor that is meant to manufacture even smaller size BTX
standard. This is smaller than many current “micro” sized motherboards, hence the name “Pico”
has been used. These motherboards share a common top half with the other sizes in the BTX
line, but they support only one or two expansion slots, designed for half-height or riser-card
applications.

In the initial stages of usage, the ATX and BTX motherboards were so analogous that moving a
BTX motherboard to an ATX case was possible and vice-versa. At later stages, the BTX form
factor had a large modification which was done by turning it into a mirror image of the ATX
standard. Technically speaking, BTX motherboards are ‘left side-right’ when compared to ATX
and not upside-down as before. This means they are mounted on the opposite side of the case.
Various computer cases for instance, the Cooler Master Series (Stackers) were released to
support a wide range of motherboard standards such as ATX, BTX, Mini-ATX and so on, in
order to simplify motherboard development without buying a new case; however, all connector
and slot standards are identical, including PCI(e) cards, processors, RAM, hard drives, etc.

BTX power supply units can be exchanged with latest ATX12V units, but not with older ATX
power supplies that don’t have the extra 4-pin 12V connector.

Mini ITX Motherboard

Mini-ITX is a 17 × 17 cm (6.7 × 6.7 in) low-power motherboard form factor. It was designed
by VIA Technologies in year 2001. These are largely used in small form factor (SFF) computer
systems. Mini-ITX boards can also be cooled easily because of their low power consumption
architecture. Such an architecture makes them widely useful for home theater PC systems or
systems where fan noise can diminish the quality or worth of cinema experience. The four
mounting holes in a Mini-ITX board line up with the four holes in ATX specification
motherboards, and the locations of the back plate and expansion slot are the same. Although, one
of the holes used was optional in earlier versions of the ATX. Hence, Mini-ITX boards can be
used in places which are designed for ATX, micro-ATX and other ATX variants if required.

The Mini-ITX form factor has location for one expansion slot, pertaining to a standard 33 MHz
5V 32-bit PCI slot. However, often case designs use riser cards and some even have two-slot
riser cards, even when the two-slot riser cards are not usable with all the boards. A few boards
based around non-x86 processors have a 3.3V PCI slot, and the Mini-ITX 2.0 (2008) boards have
a PCI-express ×16 slot. Such boards are not used with the standard PCI riser cards supplied with
cases.

Now that you know how to choose your motherboard you can also build your dream PC using it.
Every PC requires an operating system and you can check out this interesting blog post on
choosing the right operating system for your PC.This article provides a detailed outline of two
of the most popular operating systems, Linux and Windows, allowing you to determine which
will suite your needs better. However, if you want to learn more about these operating systems
before making a choice, check out this online course for an in-depth introduction to Linux or
this online course if you want to master Windows 8.

Another important aspect about using the proper motherboard for your computer is that it affects
the speed of the computer system. A good motherboard, which will be properly compatible with
the components of a computer system, will enhance the speed of the computer, while a
motherboard which is not compatible with the components of a computer system will negatively
affect the speed of the system. This course about how to speed up your computer will give
you a better understanding about the role a motherboard plays in the efficient and high speed
working of a computer system and will give you important information about the ways to
improve the speed of your computer.
AT MOTHERBOARD

ATX MOTHERBOARD
Pentium 4 motherboard