Lets start with the first couple of important tasks there is in order to make our PC work as it was intended from the factory.
Motherboards and tips about them.
So, a Motherboard is essentially your I/O , Input / Output. It is the Heart of everything. It sends out binary data the Interfaces can understand and send further into the CPU, Graphics, Sound, USB Bus, Chipsets, Network cards and many more custom components, such as Daughterboards to often take some of the load off of the PCB/MB board, which could refer to a integrated GPU on the motherboard, with an external GPU of any sorts.
While there is a bunch of ports on our motherboard, it is crucial to understand the basics of them.
USB
On the average PC in our current time, there would be 2-4 depending on the machine, vers. 2.0 usb slots, 2-3 vers. 3.0 usb slots, and maybe 2 vers. 3.1 usb slots.
Depending on the version of the usb slots, they have each their limitations on the data they can send and read, no matter the external devices capabilities.
USB 2.0 | Hi-Speed - 480 Megabits per second (Mbps)
USB 3.0 | SuperSpeed - 5 Gbps
USB 3.1 | SuperSpeed - 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps)
USB 4.0 | USB 40 - 40 Gigabits per second
It takes 8 bit to get óne byte. so, to change it into a easier way to understand, if it says on the USB 2.0, 480mbps, you divide that with 8 bits, in order to get your MB/s,
which is Megabyte/s, not Megabit/s.
To understand what usb slots your Motherboard can offer, it all depends on what version of those slots are, as in each their respective limits, they can only send you a limited data-transfer, and no matter the external device being faster to retrieve and send data, they will only be able to send the same amount of data, as your USB vers. 2.0 allows, 480mb/s.
PCI-E
PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) is an interface standard for connecting high-speed components. Depending on what motherboard you have, all of them have PCI-E slots, which can be used for external devices, such as SSD's, GPU's, Raid Drives, and much more.
PCI-E Generations compared
Credits to Tom's Hardware for the comparison chart.
While typically each motherboard has different versions of the PCI-E slots, it all differs on the speed as well of how much output you can get from your external device,
GPU
if say your GPU is capable of running PCI-E 4.0 x16 (The number after the x refers to how many data-lanes it uses to send data from the PCI-E and back) - native, and your motherboard only supports PCI-E slot vers. 3.0, the bandwidth would be halfed, as the output is limited by your motherboard, and therefor you only get half the output from your GPU.
Same thing would happen to your Raid drives, SSD's, Wifi cards, and other components.
RAM (Aka. Random Access Memory)
Ram, is probably the top third most important system component a Motherboard needs in order to run and function properly. It is the Short memory component,
as it stores data which needs to get retrieved fast, 100x faster than HDD,SSD, and other external storage devices. Even though our Operating system is stored on a SSD, HDD, in a seperate system partition, it retrieves the data from your RAM, and processes it from the SSD, HDD. When Ram allocates to your system, it tells you that the system is using some of your ram, because its faster than any other component to send through, and as such, when you reboot your system, it uses the RAM to re-enable your previous session. As for storage devices, RAM is not supposed to be understood as a Harddrive, as it is only a short memory storage, thats why we allocate big files we dont use as often on our HDD's, SSD's, and so on.
RAM Frequencies and XMP
While the system / BIOS, MB, already can detect most components and install the appropriate drivers for each component through a Windows Operating system, which could be native Microsoft legacy drivers vers. 2006, which is very stable.
These RAM modules, they each have different timings.
While it can be hard to understand what Mhz/Frequencies are, it is basically the refresh rate on how many cycles it takes to process something. 1 Hz, is once per second, 1m Hz, is 60 times per second, and now you can faintly understand how much of a difference in their respective Mhz there is. from 100Mhz to 6000Mhz, is quite a performance jump. The Command rate = Data Rate /2 , as its Single Data Rate, SDR acronym.
To give you a perspective heres a chart of the different models.
SDRAM PC100, 128MB RAM
DDR3 2133 Mhz typical 4-8Gb
DDR4 3200-4000 Mhz
DDR5 6000 Mhz
Most commonly used in this current time is the DDR4 as most motherboards affordable might as well use DDR4 standards still, as they are fast enough to run high demand programs, games and such. While DDR5, which just got released in 2020, it is a beast of its own, since the Frequency response compared to DDR4 is by far 25% faster in -
Transfer time, Data rate, Command rate, Cycle time, Cas Latency (CL) - First, fourth and eighth word.
I hope this wasn't to hard to read nor understand, as i want everyone to understand these things, as they are a part of our lives, in which we interact with each day, whether our phones, our laptops, Stationary Pc's, servers and all these devices, it is mandatory to understand key parts on how they function and how to make use of them.
Best of all, have a good weekend.
Laszloit
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