Annotated Images of ATX Socket LGA775, Socket A and Socket 939 Motherboards (Mainboards)

Annotated images of a Socket LGA 775 motherboard for Intel processors - supports Socket LGA775 for Intel Core 2 Duo, P4 5XX, 6XX, Pentium D 8XX, 9XX and Celeron D processors

Below are annotated images of an MSI 945GCM5-F (Intel Socket LGA775) motherboard and its ports panel. This motherboard provides an onboard graphics chip, hence the analog VGA graphics output port. If you want to attach this motherboard to a monitor that only has a digital DVI input port (no VGA port) , you have to make use of a VGA to DVI analog adapter cable, which can be purchased for less than £10/$20. The LGA775 FSB 1066/1333 MHz socket houses the processor.

Note that some motherboards now have integrated graphics and provide both a standard analog VGA and a digital DVI port on the ports panel, enabling the use of two monitors. The ports panel shown above only has a VGA port. The ports panel of the motherboard shown below does not have integrated graphics. A video/graphics card has to be used for the graphics.

Below is the ports panel of an MSI K9A2 Platinum (AMD Socket AM2+) motherboard. It has two eSATA ports for external SATA hard disk or CD/DVD drives. (External Blu-ray optical drives will probably be available in the eSATA format soon.) The IEEE 1394 port is a FireWire port.

If you want to view an annotated image of a Socket LGA775 motherboard that runs the latest Intel desktop-PC processors, download the user manual for the Biostar GF7050V-M7 motherboard from this page:

Biostar GF7050V-M7 motherboard - "Socket LGA 775 - Supports Intel Core 2 Extreme/Core 2 Quad/Core 2 Duo/Pentium D/Pentium 4/Celeron 400 Series/Celeron D - Supports FSB 800/1066/1333MHz." - http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en-us/mb/content.php?S_ID=307

An annotated image of a Socket A (aka Socket 462) motherboard for an AMD Athlon XP processor

Socket A motherboards (superseded technology) are no longer being used for the latest AMD processors, but most of the features are still found on the latest Socket AM2 /AM2+ motherboards that can run the latest AMD processors. The one ISA slot shown in the annotated image of a Socket A motherboard below do not appear on the latest motherboards, because they are used for superseded video cards and sound cards. The next image of a Socket 939 motherboard, which can still be bought at the time of writing (June 2006), has no ISA slot. The Socket 939 motherboard has both IDE and SATA connectors for hard disk and CD/DVD drives. (In June 2006, there were very few SATA CD/DVD drives, but they are no widely available.) The SATA standard was not available when Socket A motherboards were the current type being used for AMD's processors.

The RAID connectors

Click here! to visit information on Hard Disk Drive page of this site on RAID.

The RAID controller is on the motherboard, so you cannot use a RAID array of HDDs unless the motherboard has such a controller.

The built-in ports in the top left-hand corner of the board (the three blocks viewed from above with the white processor socket behind them) are shown in (front view) detail under the main image. The BIOS battery is the circular object on the bottom right-hand side of the motherboard.

Note that motherboards are coming out now that use their own colour schemes for the slots instead of the standard black (ISA), white (PCI), and brown (AGP/PCI Express) colours. The slots can be in any colour that the manufacturer sees fit to use.

The PCI Express (PCI-E or PCIe)/PCI Express 2.0 standard

The motherboard shown below has a single PCI Express slot for a video card. Click here! to go to information on the new standard on this site.

Annotated images of a Socket 939 motherboard for an AMD Athlon 64 and 64 FX processor

The Socket 939 motherboard shown above is the MSI RS480M2-IL, which has onboard video, sound, and networking chips and the corresponding ports on the ports back panel (Back Panel Connectors), an image of which appears below.

The Mouse and Keyboard ports are to connected wired PS/2 mouse/keyboard. The COM Port/Parallel port are used to connect a non-USB serial device (joystick) or parallel device (parallel printer). The VGA Port is a standard analog D-Sub VGA port used to connect the PC to an LCD or CRT monitor. There is no digital DVI port, so, if the LCD monitor has only a DVI port, you need to make use of a VGA-to-DVI adapter. Note that most new LCD monitors provide a VGA and a DVI port. Moreover, every graphics card I have seen that has two DVI connectors also comes with at least one, and usually two, DVI-to-VGA adapters. Most graphics cards that have dual-DVI ports use DVI-I, which also passes the analog VGA signals. So, even if you buy a graphics card that has two DVI connectors, you'll be able to connect them to an old VGA monitor. The 1394 Port is a FireWire port. There are four USB 2.0 ports under it and the LAN port which is a connection for an Ethernet network. The SPDIF-Out port is usually used to connect the output of a DVD player to a home theater receiver that supports Dolby Digital or DTS surround sound. Another common use is to carry uncompressed digital audio from a CD/DVD player to a receiver. The three remaining ports are to carry sound - the line-in, line-out and microphone ports. This motherboard has no HDMI port that is used to connect a PC to a (high definition) HD TV. The Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H motherboard is an example of a motherboard that provides an HDMI port. It is shown as d in the image below.

You can download the user manual for the MSI RS480M2-IL motherboard in the PDF format from http://www.msi.com.tw/.

June 2006. - AMD is currently migrating all of its processors to Socket AM2 motherboards, but Socket 939 Athlon 64 processors are still available.

AMD's new range of Socket AM2 processors have been available for some time together with the motherboards that run them made by the major manufacturers.

AMD's Socket AM2 processors have an on-board memory controller that supports the latest DDR2 RAM.

In November 2007, the AMD Socket AM2+ quad-core processors called the Phenom arrived on the market.

Socket AM2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_AM2

Socket AM2+ - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_AM2%2B

AMD's Socket AM3 processors and the motherboards that run them are expected to be made available in late 2008.

Socket AM3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_AM3

You can download the user manual for the Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H Socket AM2+/AM2 motherboard in the PDF format from http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/.

There is only one x16 PCI Express slot for a PCI-E video card, but other PCI Express motherboards can have short x1 and x2 PCI Express slots for devices other than a video card. At the time of writing (July 2005), alternative PCI-E devices that don't exist yet. The four SATA ATA headers are for four SATA ATA hard disk drives. The BIOS battery is in the bottom middle of the board next to the middle PCI slot. The board runs AMD Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX processors which have an onboard memory controller instead of making use of a memory controller built into the motherboard itself. To run the RAM memory in dual-channel mode, two modules have to be installed in either the blue or black DIMM slots. This motherboard has an inbuilt PCI Express video/graphics chip - the ATI Radeon XPRESS 200. Unusually, its chipset is also made by ATI. Unusual because the company doesn't usually produce motherboard chipsets.

The IEEE 1394 Port is a FireWire 400 port. The VGA Port is for a CRT or LCD monitor. The RJ-45 LAN Port can be used to cable the computer with this motherboard to a network, or it can be used for a broadband modem. The S-Video Port and Composite Out ports are used to connect the computer to devices such as a VCR video recorder. The four bottom ports, including the coaxial S/PDIF Port, are for sound, which are dealt with on the Sound page on this site.

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