Show Notes - Episode 13
SERIES: Lab Rats
EPISODE #: 13
RELEASE DATE: February 6, 2006
TITLE: Motherboard Anatomy
RUN TIME: 17:31:01
HOSTS: Andy Walker and Sean Carruthers
PRODUCER: Matt Harris
EDITOR: Sean Carruthers
SOURCE: www.labrats.tv/episodes/ep13.html
NOTES:
Andy's Book - Absolute Beginners Guide to Security, Spam, Spyware, & Viruses
Motherboard - control center of the computer
CPU - central processing unit
- New Pentium processors from Intel use a pinless design that must be clamped into place.
- Without a heatsink to remove heat, a CPU might melt, or even explode. They can reach well over 100 degrees C.
- Just remember to use fans on the case too, to prevent the heat from the CPU from damaging your other components.
RAM - Random Access Memory
- In our tests, adding RAM invariably boosted system performance, sometimes as much as 30 percent
- Typically located next to the CPU
- Modern systems use DDR or DDR2 memory. Older systems used SDRAM. They are incompatible with each other.
- SDRAM has two "key" notches.
- DDR and DDR2 has one notch each but they're in slightly different places
- Fair amount of pressure is necessary to install RAM (memory)
- **Note** Your motherboard may not recognize RAM sticks over a certain size, so check your specs!
Optical Drive = CD or DVD.
Hard Drive - connects to motherboard with a cable
- IDE - ability to connect two devices to the same cable
- Serial ATA - can only connect one device
- Serial ATA and IDE cables only carry enough power to move data back and forth, not to power drives themselves
- See Episode _ for more Hard Drive information
- WARNING! If you're chaining two hard drives with different transfer speeds, data corruption may occur
Power Supply
- Each component inside your computer uses a certain amount of energy, which is measured in watts
- Power supplies have a Watt rating, which should be higher than the total Wattage needed by your components
- ATX power connectors have been on motherboards since 1995. Older motherboards will be different.
- 24-pin ATX connectors are used by new Intel and AMD motherboards with PCI Express onboard.
- 4-pin12V connector has appeared on motherboards, since the introduction of the Pentium 4 processor.
- Almost impossible to not connect correctly
- The third power connector (AXL) appeared on the first Pentium 2 boards. Most new boards don't need it
Electrostatic discharge may not feel all that powerful to your finger, but it's enough to fry your RAM or CPU
Graphics (Video) Card
- AGP - connectors are the color brown.
- PCI Express - connectors are typically black
- PCI slots are older and slower than the newer PCI Express cards, and they are incompatible with each other
Battery - saves the date and time when the computers shuts-down.
- If your system is over 5 years old, you can often fix flakiness problems with a $3 CD-2032 battery.
- Remember, though; if you remove the battery, you'll need to reset your BIOS configuration again!
- Graphics capabilities are often built into boards featuring PCI Express, but they're not always implemented
- Integrated audio and video are an inexpensive choice, but performance is worse than with add-in cards
- Plugging a PCI Express graphics card into the motherboard disables the built-in graphics connector
- Microsoft's PC'97 System Design Guide specified standard color coding for commonly-used connectors.
- The PC'98 specification recommended that ISA be removed from motherboards altogether. It was, soon after.
Andy's Book - Absolute Beginners Guide to Security, Spam, Spyware, & Viruses
CREDITS
Location Manager - Eileen
Lighting Provided by Geo Perdis
Title Graphics by Steve Huntriss (AKA ‘Tackie’)
Theme Music by Dee Long
Intern - Mike Britton
Cameras Courtsey of:
Special Thanks To:
Dick DeBartolo
Eileen
Email Us At:
Show Notes by Michael Britton
(c) 2006 Labrats Media
