Technical Vocational Education(TVE)9

First Quarter

The System Unit and

the Motherboard

Canva layout by the developer

Prepared by:

MARILOU F. ANGADOL

i
 Information Sheet 1.3
The System Unit and the Motherboard

Specific Objectives:
1. Identify types and parts of the System Unit and Motherboard.
2. Explain correctly the functions of the System Unit and Motherboard.
__________________________________________________________

The System Unit and the Motherboard

SYSTEM UNIT

System unit is the enclosure for all the other main interior
components of a computer. It is also called the computer case,
computer chassis, or computer tower. Cases are typically made of steel
or aluminum, but plastic can also be used.

It includes the following parts: Motherboard, Microprocessor,

Memory Chips, Buses, Ports, Expansion Slots and Cards including the
case itself.

PARTS OF THE SYSTEM UNIT:

1. System Case
Also known as a computer chassis, cabinet, box, tower,
enclosure, housing, or simply case, is the enclosure
that contains most of the components of a computer.
Purposely to hold and protect the parts.

2. Case Fan
A fan inside, or attached to a computer case used for cooling
purposes, and may refer to fans that draw cooler air into the
case from the outside, expel warm air from inside, or move
air across a heatsink to cool a particular component.

3. Power Supply Unit (PSU)

Installed in the back corner of the PC case, next to the
motherboard. It converts AC voltage into the appropriate
DC voltages before supplying it to the other components
in the PC. Also converts High Voltage power to the
appropriate power needed inside the system unit.
4. Hard Disk Drive - (HDD)
Also known as hard drive, is a magnetic storage device that is
installed inside the computer. The hard drive is used as
permanent storage for data (non-volatile). In a Windows
computer, the hard drive is usually configured as the C: drive
and contains the operating system and applications.

5. Optical Drive
An optical drive is a device that uses lasers to read data
on the optical media.
There are three types of optical drives: Compact Disc
(CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) and Blu-ray Disc (BD).

6. Storage Interface (cables) / Data Cables

Use to connect storage devices / drives to the motherboard.
TYPES OF STORAGE INTERFACES (CABLES)
• IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics)
An IDE interface is an interface for mass storage devices. It is the cable to
bridge the parts mostly the disk drives into the motherboard. Also known as
PATA.

• SATA (Serial – Advanced Technology Attachment) An evolution of the

Parallel ATA physical storage interface. One of the main design advantages
of Serial ATA is that the thinner serial cables facilitate more efficient airflow
inside a form factor and also allow for smaller chassis designs.
7. Expansion Boards/cards
A printed circuit board that you can insert into a computer to give it added capabilities.
Examples are LAN card, video card and sound card and many others.

Expansions Cards
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8. Motherboard / Primary Circuit Board (PCB)/Mainboard / System Board

The main circuit board of a computer. It contains all the circuits and components that
run the computer. Responsible for connecting all computer devices to the
microprocessor. It supplies devices with power and allows the computer to react with
them.

Motherboard
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PARTS OF THE MOTHERBOARD

The Motherboard

a. Processor Socket
The processor socket houses the Central
Processing Unit (CPU).

Several types of socket exist, but only 2 of them

are really used:
• Pin Grid Array (PGA)
• Land Grid Array (LGA)

b. Memory Slots
Memory slots also call memory
banks are for Random Access
Memory modules (RAM). Each
memory bank can receives a
RAM module designed for a
specific pc mother board.
Ranging from 2 to 4 banks.
c. PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slot
/Extension Slots
PCI slots are used to install sound cards, graphic
cards, Ethernet cards and modems and other
expansion cards.

d. Graphics Card Slot

d.1. AGP slot (Advanced Graphics Port/
Accelerated Graphics Port)
The motherboard parts Accelerated Graphics Port
(AGP) focus on graphic cards only. AGP technologies
highly boost your graphics and video performances.

d.2. PCIe slot- (Another slot for graphics card is the PCIe or the PCI Express slot
which is a modified version of the PCI slot.

Different versions of PCIe on a motherboard

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e. Power connector
Power connector is use to get the electric energy from the
PSU (Power Supply Unit) which the motherboard requires to
function properly.

f. CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor) Backup Battery Slot

This slot contains the CMOS battery that provides small amount of power for the
computer to store data even of the power is off.
 The CMOS is a computer chip responsible for storing settings of a computer system.
CMOS does not stores programs; it only stores data that is read by BIOS to complete
the programs needed to talk to changeable hardware. Typically contain the following
information:
• Drive types
• CPU
• RAM size
• Date and Time
• Serial and Parallel port info
• Plug and Play info
• Power saving setting

g. Serial ATA Connector

The connector to which SATA cables will be inserted. Current
motherboards feature both IDE and S-ATA connectors to
facilitate all types of storage hardware.

h. IDE Connector
The connector to which IDE cables will be inserted. IDE cables connect devices such
as hard disks, CD Drives and DVD Drives.

The IDE cable is color coded to help you get

them in the correct order.
i. The Blue connector should be
connected to the system board
ii. The Black connector should be
connected to the master device
iii. The Grey Connector should be
connected to the slave device

i. Heat sink
Drains the heat of the motherboard to avoid overheating.

j. BIOS (Basic Input Output System) Chip

The BIOS is special software that interfaces the major hardware components of your
computer with the operating system. It is usually stored on a Flash memory chip on the
motherboard, but sometimes the chip is another type of ROM.
 When you turn on your computer, the BIOS does several things. This is its usual
sequence:
1. Check the CMOS Setup for custom settings
2. Load the interrupt handlers and device drivers
3. Initialize registers and power management
4. Perform the power-on self-test (POST)
5. Display system settings
6. Determine which devices are bootable
7. Initiate the bootstrap sequence

k. CPU Fan and Heat Sink Mount

Holes in the motherboard where the CPU’s fan /heat sink will be installed.

l. Chipsets
l.1. North Bridge Commonly with the
heat sink (under). Northbridge is an
Intel chipset that communicates with
the computer processor and controls
interaction with memory, the PCI bus,
Level 2 cache, and AGP activities.
Northbridge is one part of a two-part
chipset called Northbridge/Southbridge.

l.2. South Bridge

Southbridge handles the input/output
(I/O) functions of the chipset.
m. Front Panel Pins
Parts of the motherboard where connectors from the front panel ports or buttons will
be connected.

i. USB header - Pins to connect the front panel USB ports.

ii. Casing Fan Pins – Pins to connect casing fan. Some motherboards have pins
where we can connect the casing fan.
iii. Audio Pins – Pins to connect the audio front panel of the System Unit.
iv. Speaker Pins – Pins to connect the internal speaker of the Computer
v. Power/Reset/Light Indicators – Pins to connect the power and reset buttons of
the System Unit. It also includes the pins to connect the light indicators of the front
panel.

p. Back panel of the system unit:

Parts of the motherboard where peripheral devices are connected.
i. PS/2 ports: Each motherboard usually has 2 PS/2 connectors for the
keyboard and the mouse.
ii. USB (Universal Serial Bus) port: There are usually a couple of these ports
located on each motherboard used for connecting USB interface devices like
pen drives, external hard drives/optical drives, USB printers.
iii. HDMI port - High Definition Multimedia Interface, HDMI is a connector and
cable capable of transmitting high-quality and high-bandwidth streams of
audio and video between devices. The HDMI technology is used with
devices such as an HDTV, Projector, DVD player, or Blu-ray player
iv. Sound Card Connectors (Audio): It is where the microphone or speakers
are plugged.
v. Display Connector (VGA/DVI): Connecting your monitor to the
motherboard.
• VGA- Video Graphics Array
• DVI- Digital Visual Interface
vi. LAN Port (for RJ45) – a place to connect your network cables to connect
the computer to a network.
OTHER PARTS CONTAINED ON THE MOTHERBOARD
1. CPU (Central Processing Unit) / Processor
The processor is the main “brain” of a computer
system. It performs all of the instructions and calculations
that are needed and manages the flow of information
through a computer.

2. Processor Fan Provide a wind to cool the CPU.

There are multitude of CPU cooling fans with big built in heat
sink to help dissipate the heat.

3. Internal Speaker
The internal speaker is capable of generating beeps
of different frequencies. These beeps indicate the
condition of the computer.

d. Memory Modules (primary storage, main memory or

memory) is the computer's working storage space that holds
data, instructions for processing and processed data
(information) waiting to be sent to secondary storage.

e. Motherboard/CMOS Battery
The battery gives the board (specially the CMOS) a small
amount of power in order to store some vital data on your
machine when the power is off.