That motherboard picture is correct - spot on.
What does the Southbridge chip do?
This is a sampling of things the chips do. Southbridge
is noteworthy for the SATA or IDE ports. Those are the
things people remember. The I/O rates are from highest
to lowest. The CPU does things the fastest (bandwidths
of many gigabytes/sec). At the bottom, the SuperIO does
things like serial ports at 9600 baud. So they're kind
of arranged in I/O rate order. The very slowest interfaces
go on the SuperIO. Architecturally, Intel has been working
at eliminating the SuperIO, by deprecating the interfaces
on it. That's why PS/2, floppy drive, and serial ports,
got "bumped off". There's really nothing wrong with PS/2
as far as I'm concerned. I find I never have a problem
with it, whereas USB has the occasional glitch. PS/2
is damn near bulletproof (just not hot-plug compatible).
I don't think I've ever had a problem with PS/2 here,
in my computer room.
CPU
|
RAM -- Northbridge --- PCI Express x16
|
Southbridge --- PCI bus ---- Ethernet
| --- SATA, IDE
| --- USB2
SuperIO ------- PS/2
------- Serial Ports
------- Voltage monitor
------- Floppy drive
The heatsink does not appear to be removeable, It has a couple of spring
clips, but when I push one down the sink does not move?
The hook and clip scheme, normally leaves that heatsink
"floating" a bit. But, if the manufacturer fits double
sided thermal tape underneath, that may be a secondary
mechanism to prevent if from moving. If disassembling it,
you'd have to be very careful to not damage it.
If a thermal paste is used instead, it functions as a lubricant
and then the heatsink moves freely.
A weakness of that generation of fastener, was the U-shaped
thing that solders into the motherboard, the solder does
not grip the metal very well. The U-shaped thing can pull
out of the motherboard. This is caused by the wrong metal
being used for the U-shaped thing. It should have been
tin/lead over copper, rather than being something resembling
stainless steel.
Later generations use nylon "push-pins", rather than the clip.
So the clip idea is no longer popular. I have never seen a
public admission by anyone involves with that stuff, that
their choice of metals was poor. They probably believe, to
this day, they did a good job :-(
I see the little chip to the right (EEPRM). However, there is a much larger
chip just above and a little to the right of the Southbridge. Do you what
this chip does - just below the USB ports?
By reading the numbers off the chip, and Googling them,
sometimes you can get a hint. I frequently can't get pictures
which show the codes on the chip. And guessing based on shape,
is pretty dangerous. I have a rough idea (like that chipset
diagram above), what some of the components needed would be.
But I won't be able to successfully identify everything,
at this distance.
The one above and to the right, could be an Ethernet controller.
But the chip shape is pretty weird. Lots of Ethernet chips, use
smaller, more modern packages than that (BGA).
Notice there is a chip similar in form, near the hook on the
PCI Express x16 port, and that one could be a Clock Generator.
It generates digital clocks, that determine the precise rates
that lots of the hardware runs at. When you overclock, that
involves programming registers inside a chip like that.
At the top of the board close to the USB ports, at the bottom and to the
right, at the bottom of that long white label there are two prongs. One
has a fawn coloured plastic cover. What does that do?
That could be the "Clear CMOS" jumper. It resets BIOS settings,
or perhaps it can also clear the BIOS password, if you're locked out.
Read the manual, before using it. Generally speaking, the power
should be disconnected, before you use it. The instructions
in the user manual, are supposed to warn you about that thing.
A few other things that occur to me on my exploration.
This board is a BTX board. Is a BTX board any square board, or must it be
260mm (my measurement)?
No, there are multiple motherboard standards, with a roughly square
shape to them. They're not all BTX.
BTX arranges the components in a particular pattern. Intel
offers a specification, which shows what the design principles are,
so you can do your own layouts. The design intent might have been
for the purpose of improving thermal performance. I don't think
BTX was too popular with hobbyists who build their own machines.
And the need for improved thermal performance, has been
gradually dropping. At one time, Intel was "gearing up" for
hot hot hardware, and that never happened. The Prescott processor
was a wakeup call for Intel, that they had to go back to the
lab, and design improved silicon and processes, and the
thermal madness had to stop. The stuff was just getting too hot.
The change from S478 socket, to LGA775, mainly added power and
ground pins to the socket. That was intended to beef up the
maximum amount of power the CPU could draw. They were preparing
for trouble, but at the same time, their fab staff were sent off
to work on improving things. And they're *still* working on that,
improving a bit every year. This year, it's FinFETs to the rescue
for example. (The processors coming summer of this year, will run
a lot cooler, and have smaller coolers fitted to the top.)
Th chipset is I believe G965.
If the chipset represents the electronics on a system board. Does this
mean that any board labelled G965 must use the same electronics and bo of
the same geometrical configuration, ie, the boards must be identical in
every way?
No. G965 identifies the chipset. It doesn't say anything about
any other detail. I could mount the chips in a soup can if I want.
Just because you buy another G965, doesn't make all possible
problems go away. G965 chipsets could be used on either ATX or
BTX form factor motherboards.
Another G965 board though, will allow the existing drivers
installed in your OS to work. But there could still be differences,
like, a different Ethernet chip on your new board. Just because
the board is G965, doesn't mean the Ethernet NIC chip is fixed,
and they could use RealTek, Marvell, or even Intel for it. And
a different driver needed for each. So while another G965 board
would likely start to boot, you might see the "new hardware wizard"
pop up when new and different chips are detected.
People talk a lot about the damage that static can do. But are not the
components covered in a varnish that protects against static?
Electrostatic protection is a compromise. Some materials, if
applied to a chip, not only do they suppress static electricity,
they also distort the electrical signals (the ones we want to keep).
So there are limits as to which techniques are compatible with
high speed signaling. A varnish coating could add a fraction of
a picofarad of capacitive coupling to a signal.
I worked with a guy, who used to investigate some of those
techniques. He used to get samples of the latest whizzy
gadgets for controlling static. And generally he was unimpressed
with most of them (they caused too much distortion, and he would
use various instruments to see how bad they were). You'd see some
of them introduced, and they'd promptly disappear from the market.
I never wasted time doing such work on the side myself. He was
just better at finding these things than I was. I relied on the
protection inside the chip, for that.
I note the many colours of wiring in the case. What do the colour codes mean.
Thanks
Well, black is ground
The ATX supplies tend to use standard
colors, as specific in the ATX supply spec. So some of the colors
are relatively standard now. This link will help you answer some
of your questions.
http://www.playtool.com/pages/psuconnectors/connectors.html
HTH,
Paul
