can someone explain Motherboards to me ?

nineteenforty4 · 1 Sep 2011 at 14:45

Hi

Now I have to say I am really confused about Motherboards, in particular their features, now this I guess has a lot to to with the Jargon - can someone explain what all the Acronyms are ?? And what do you look for when buying a Motherboard

I understand that the socket (like 1155 for sandybridge) is what CPU it can work with, and the USB number is the amount of USB slots it can take, and that crossfire is used to link two GPUs

But what's the Z68 and P67 stuff, RAID, firewire and what is PCI-E x 16 and PCI-E x1 ect ??
And what's the deal with the ASUS sabertooth

I think the fact that English isn't my first language might be compounding my lack of computer knowledge

Thanks

Martini1991 · 1 Sep 2011 at 14:48

The USB number has nothing to do with the amount of slots

.
USB 3, is that it has USB 3 support.

RAID is ; Redundant array of inexpensive drivers (Can be used for different things, it's a method of having multie HDD's working together).

PCI-E 16x is a PCI-E slot which has 16 lanes wired
PCI-E 1x is a small PCI-E lane for sound card

The Asus sabertooh is just a motherboard.

panyan · 1 Sep 2011 at 14:58

nineteenforty4 said:
But what's the Z68 and P67 stuff, RAID, firewire and what is PCI-E x 16 and PCI-E x1 act ??

As far am i am concerned, choosing a motherboard is mainly the chipset and the ports

1) Chipset - this is the z68, p67, h61, p55, x58 etc etc

This is the chip that "controls" the motherboard and "gives it features", this is only for intel, AMD have their own other ones. The easiest way to explain is:

H61: SandyBridge Chipset, but doesnt have USB 3.0 or SATA 3

H67: same as H61 but WITH USB 3.0 and SATA 3

P67: Same as H67 but with overclocking potential (but no in built graphics)

z68: Combines H67 and P67 for overclocking and inbuilt graphics

Clearly Z68 is the "best" of these chipsets but it doesnt mean thet you should run and buy one becuase it may have a lot of features that you dont need and so are just wasting your budget where you could be spending it better on other stuff

Also, the better the chipset, the more ports it can run, so you wont find a H61 with quad SLI support becuase it cant do that

2) Ports

This is what you plug stuff into on the motherboard

The lower chipsets may have less graphics card slots, less additional slots, less ram slots, less ports on the back and fewer overclocking abilities

But dont worry about that, if you only have one graphics card (like 99% of the world), dont need more than 8GB of RAM (like 99% of the world), and sone have a tonne of additional devices in your computer (like 99% of the world), then you wont be needing the best chipset with the most ports - in fact, youll just be wasting you money

The BEST way to choose a motherboard if to base it on what you will be going with your computer, if your just web browsing and gaming a little, a H67 board is fine, but if you are running quad SLI folding@home machine, youll need something with more ports and more features

nineteenforty4 · 1 Sep 2011 at 15:01

Martini1991 said:
The USB number has nothing to do with the amount of slots .
USB 3, is that it has USB 3 support.

RAID is ; Redundant array of inexpensive drivers (Can be used for different things, it's a method of having multie HDD's working together).

PCI-E 16x is a PCI-E slot which has 16 lanes wired
PCI-E 1x is a small PCI-E lane for sound card

The Asus sabertooh is just a motherboard.

Thanks so Raid makes HDDs work like one bigger one ?

I meant USB 2.0 x 12 or x 8 means you get 12 or 8

And I don't understand the difference between the PCI-E things
so if something has x3 PCI-E x16 x2 PCI-E x1 x2 PCI
it has three big ones two small and two ?

And I don't understand the sabertooth - what's Milspec and thermal armour

panyan · 1 Sep 2011 at 15:07

nineteenforty4 said:
Thanks so Raid makes HDDs work like one bigger one ?

I meant USB 2.0 x 12 or x 8 means you get 12 or 8
And I don't understand the difference between the PCI-E things
so if something has x3 PCI-E x16, x2 PCI-E x1, x2 PCI
it has three big ones two small and two ?

And I don't understand the sabertooth - what's Milspec and thermal armour

1) RAID can combine two smaller hard drives into a larger one, but the chance of failure is doubled, so it isnt really used i wouldnt say

2) the number of usb ports is irrelevent unless you have over 8 things plugged in at once!

3) PCI is the older white longer ones, PCI-Express x1 is the smaller ones just for wifi/tv cards and the x16 is for your graphics cards

4) Asus's Sabertooth motherboards are normal motherboards designed to look cool to get kids to buy them because they think they are getting something they can stand behind in a nuclear detonation - expensive for the sake of being expensive - i'd avoid and go with a more sensible option personally

Martini1991 · 1 Sep 2011 at 15:07

nineteenforty4 said:
Thanks so Raid makes HDDs work like one bigger one ?

I meant USB 2.0 x 12 or x 8 means you get 12 or 8
And I don't understand the difference between the PCI-E things
so if something has x3 PCI-E x16 x2 PCI-E x1 x2 PCI
it has three big ones two small and two ?

And I don't understand the sabertooth - what's Milspec and thermal armour

It depends what type of RAID you use, as there's different types.

panyan said:
1) RAID can combine two smaller hard drives into a larger one, but the chance of failure is doubled, so it isnt really used i would say

RAID 0, in easy to digest terms is everything being split into two equal parts on both hard drives, if one fails then the array is broken and unrecoverable. All it does is adds in extra factors of data loss due to having programs on two hard drives.

RAID 0 is VERY handy imo, as I use it on my SSD's, I have upto 1.1GB/s read. I wrote a 350mb rar file on click

nineteenforty4 · 1 Sep 2011 at 15:23

panyan said:
2) Ports

This is what you plug stuff into on the motherboard

The lower chipsets may have less graphics card slots, less additional slots, less ram slots, less ports on the back and fewer overclocking abilities

But dont worry about that, if you only have one graphics card (like 99% of the world), dont need more than 8GB of RAM (like 99% of the world), and sone have a tonne of additional devices in your computer (like 99% of the world), then you wont be needing the best chipset with the most ports - in fact, youll just be wasting you money

The BEST way to choose a motherboard if to base it on what you will be going with your computer, if your just web browsing and gaming a little, a H67 board is fine, but if you are running quad SLI folding@home machine, youll need something with more ports and more features

Thanks this is really good.
So what are the acronyms of each port?
like a GPU uses:......? a HDD/SSD needs.....?

And if the sabertooth is just a flashy rip - what is the stuff on it ? - I cant translate it in my head

cats_five · 2 Sep 2011 at 08:19

nineteenforty4 said:
Thanks this is really good.
So what are the acronyms of each port?
like a GPU uses:......? a HDD/SSD needs.....?

And if the sabertooth is just a flashy rip - what is the stuff on it ? - I cant translate it in my head

Have you tried putting any of these into Google? For example, one of the hits on the first page for HDD is:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive

nineteenforty4 · 2 Sep 2011 at 14:33

Yes but there isn't a Google Gaelic

scrlk · 2 Sep 2011 at 15:31

nineteenforty4 said:
Yes but there isn't a Google Gaelic

http://translate.google.com/

Have fun - although sometimes it might have translation errors.

nineteenforty4 · 2 Sep 2011 at 15:38

I don't see my language on there.

cats_five · 3 Sep 2011 at 05:09

nineteenforty4 said:
I don't see my language on there.

Bet none of the rest of us speak it either, so you are no better off asking here and Google is a lot quicker.

nineteenforty4 · 3 Sep 2011 at 15:50

Yes that's why I was asking for someone to explain it to me in everyday speaking english not technical. Im just gonna ditch this thread now.

Idleman · 3 Sep 2011 at 18:21

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/componentprofiles/p/p_mobo.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motherboard
http://www.pcreview.co.uk/articles/hardware/what_is_a_motherboard/
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/componentprofiles/p/p_mobo.htm

Any of the above will help explain.

http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1155/SABERTOOTH_P67/

This will explain more about the Sabretooth. Or google/bing "Sabretooth P67" for reviews.

Are you actually looking for a motherboard or just a bit of knowledge? If so, you won`t learn anything by giving up, persevere.

Tribune · 3 Sep 2011 at 20:20

Mil-spec is usually a term used about weapons. Rifles that are mil-specced for example would have better quality, harder wearing components than the same weapon designation that is sold for civilian use.

If the term is being used to describe motherboards then it's probably marketing speak for 'we put a crappy bit of plastic on it to look cool for kids'.

panyan · 3 Sep 2011 at 21:36

Tribune said:
'we put a crappy bit of plastic on it to look cool for kids'.

+1 this is usually the case ;-)