A Guide to Buying a Motherboard

we have so many question about Motherboard. So first start with LGA.What is LGA

 land grid array (LGA) is a type of surface-mount packaging for integrated circuits (ICs) that is notable for having the pins on the socket (when a socket is used) rather than the integrated circuit.^[1] An LGA can be electrically connected to a printed circuit board (PCB) either by the use of a socket or by soldering directly to the board.

LGA is used as a physical interface for microprocessors of the Intel Pentium 4 (Prescott), Intel Xeon, Intel Core 2, Intel Core (Bloomfield and Lynnfield) and AMD Opteron families. Unlike the pin grid array (PGA) interface found on most AMD and older Intel processors, there are no pins on the chip; in place of the pins are pads of bare gold-plated copper that touch protruding pins on the microprocessor's connector on the motherboard.

The most common Intel desktop LGA socket is dubbed LGA 1150 (Socket H3), which is used with Intel's Haswell and Broadwell series Core i3, i5, and i7 families, as well as their lower-end Pentium and Celeron families. However, the Haswell-E Core i7 family uses the LGA 2011 (Socket R) socket. The LGA setup provides higher pin densities, allowing more power contacts and thus a more stable power supply to the chip. LGA packaging also has a tertiary benefit of placing pins onto the motherboard; if a pin breaks, the motherboard is often cheaper to replace than the CPU chip (as compared to a PGA chip/socket setup).

The AMD server LGA socket is designated Socket G34 (LGA 1944). Like Intel, AMD decided to use LGA sockets for their higher pin densities, as a 1944-pin PGA would simply be too large for most motherboards.

AMD[edit]

• Socket F (LGA 1207)
• Socket C32 (LGA 1207) (replaces Socket F)
• Socket G34 (LGA 1944)
• SP3 LGA

Intel[edit]

• LGA 771 (Socket J)
• LGA 775 (Socket T)
• LGA 1366 (Socket B)
• LGA 1356 (Socket B2)
• LGA 1156 (Socket H)
• LGA 1155 (Socket H2)
• LGA 1150 (Socket H3)
• LGA 1151 (Socket H4)
• LGA 2011 (Socket R)
• LGA 2011-3 (Socket R3)

Note that LGA 2011-3 is incompatible with 2011 and is used for 3rd and 4th generation Intel Core i7 extreme processors and the Intel X99 chipset.

What are the Ports

Rear-Panel Ports

A computer's rear panel is a lot more than just where you plug in your monitor, printer, and network cable—it's your motherboard's interface to the world. In selecting a motherboard, you'll want to assess its rear panel carefully. Though you can always add features with an expansion card, that's never easier than having something work out of the box. Among the things to watch for:

• Keyboard and mouse ports: Many keyboards and mice today connect to your computer via USB, but those ubiquitous round (often purple and green) connectors are still used frequently by larger vendors and by people who have a favorite keyboard or mouse from the days when PS/2 ports were all the rage. (We can relate to that all too well.)
• USB/FireWire: These are the two most popular methods for connecting external devices today, and depending on how many you own, you'll want as many ports as you can get. Four USB ports and one FireWire jack on the rear panel are a common mix, and most motherboards allow you to connect more to onboard headers, creating more ports that can be accessed on your system's front panel or via special brackets that attach to expansion-slot openings.
• Ethernet: Once upon a time, you had to buy expansion cards to get Ethernet capabilities for your computer, but almost all of today's motherboards have one Ethernet jack, and many have two. If you have a network cable, you'll be on the Internet in minutes.
• Serial/parallel ports: They're going the way of the dodo today, but in the pre-USB days serial and parallel ports were crucial for connecting mice, printers, and other devices. If one of your favorite peripherals uses one, check for availability on your motherboard first.
• eSATA ports: External SATA (eSATA) ports can be excellent ways to connect an external hard drive to your PC. These are still fairly rare, but they are becoming more common on higher-end motherboards, so look for one or two if you think you'll want to add space without opening up your case

Overclocking and Tweaking

You probably wouldn't have needed to read this far if you're into overclocking, or pushing your computer beyond its manufacturer-rated speed. It's somewhat risky and might reduce your processor's natural life-span, but it can be a fun way of testing your system's mettle (and yours), so some motherboard manufacturers include built-in features and utilities just for the purpose. Frequency tuners, special heat-dissipation methods, and other safety measures are among the options some tweaker-friendly motherboards offer—but they don't come cheap. If you won't use these features, it's not worth paying extra for them.

Expansion Slots

Among the key features of any motherboard are the expansion slots. ATX motherboards might contain five or six; the smaller form factors might have just three. However many, they allow you to outfit your computer with a wide range of capabilities it might not have been designed with. Typically, these include components such as graphics or sound cards, though TV-tuner cards and physics-acceleration cards are other possibilities. Ethernet controllers are another possibility, too, though these are generally integrated into motherboards these days.

Whatever you want to add, your motherboard will need the proper slots for the cards you intend to use. Still common are standard PCI 2.2 slots, though speedier and more versatile PCI Express (PCIe) slots are increasingly taking their place. PCIe comes in a few different flavors, depending on the number of data paths a given slot supports. The kinds you'll see most often are x16, x4, and x1, each progressively smaller in size.

Today's highest-performance PCIe video cards generally require one x16 slot, and if your motherboard supports AMD's CrossFire or Intel's Scalable Link Interface (SLI) technologies, which allow you to install two video cards for supercharged performance, you might need two. You won't always get the full x16 bandwidth on the second physical slot (that's a key detail to check before you buy), but the speed and quality increase will be considerable nonetheless.

Some motherboards still come with Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP) slots, which drove the more robust graphics cards of the 1990s. While these are still used sporadically today, chances are you won't need a motherboard with an AGP slot.

If you don't need supercharged graphics or advanced audio, you might be able to get by with a board that comes equipped with integrated graphics and/or sound. (This can free up certain expansion slots, too.) Some graphics-equipped boards provide support for basic 3D acceleration; onboard audio functionality sometimes includes eight-channel surround sound and optical connectors. If you're not a diehard gamer, built-in options like these can be a money-saving way to fulfill your basic visual and aural computing needs. Otherwise, you'll have to fill an expansion slot or two with dedicated cards; even the better integrated graphics chipsets, like the AMD 690 and GeForce 6150, can't compare with midrange 3D cards from nVidia and ATI. If you want to be assured of amazing graphics and sound, you'll have to shell out for dedicated cards.

Drive Connections: IDE, SATA, RAID

In years gone by, you'd open up a case and see waves of flat, gray IDE ribbon cables connecting your various hard, floppy, and optical drives to your motherboard. Today, most hard drives connect via Serial ATA (SATA), which is faster (1.5 or 3 gigabits per second are the going rates, and still-faster speeds are on the horizon), and uses neater and smaller cords.

Most motherboards will offer a combination of drive connections, such as four for SATA drives and one old-style IDE connector for any combination of two hard drives or optical drives. (Another connector is often included for a floppy drive, in case you need or want one in your system.) If you're moving old drives to a new computer, you'll want to check that you have enough of the right kinds of connections. Otherwise, if you're buying new drives, SATA drives are so commonplace now that you'll likely not have to worry.

Another hard drive concern: RAID. It stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks, and it allows you to either combine several smaller drives' capacities into one large drive or use several drives to mirror, or back up, data for added security. Not every motherboard supports RAID, so if it's something you're interested in, verify its availability on the board for your hard drives (SATA or IDE) before purchasing.

RAM

Your system's trusty processor can't do your computer's work alone—it needs the help of random access memory (RAM), where computers store code and data while doing their number-crunching.

The more RAM you have, the better, but your motherboard has to support the amount and type you want to give it. The most popular type today is DDR2 RAM, and most motherboards will support it, but check when you're buying just in case the board you're looking at requires older (and slower) DDR RAM.

Also, note what memory standard your motherboard supports, because you'll want to get RAM that matches it as closely as possible. If, for example, your motherboard supports DDR2 667, getting DDR2 533 memory won't take full advantage of the power your system has. DDR2 800 memory, on the other hand, will work, but your motherboard won't know how to take advantage of the extra bandwidth.

Finally, how much RAM can your motherboard hold? When shopping, pay attention to how many RAM slots the motherboard has, the RAM amount each one can hold, and what the board's maximum total capacity is. Many smaller form factors will only have space for two RAM chips, while ATX motherboards might have four or more slots capable of holding 8GB or even 32GB.

Most motherboards today feature a handy technology called dual-channel memory architecture. By installing two RAM chips into matching banks (which are usually color-coded) on a motherboard set up this way, you can effectively double data throughput. And faster RAM, like more RAM, is always a good thing.