IDE and SATA Ports

IDE and SATA Ports

IDE and SATA ports are used to provide connectivity for the storage devices and optical drives. The IDE interface is somewhat outdated, so you shouldn’t be surprised if you see a lot of new motherboards coming without this type of port. It was replaced by the smaller and much faster SATA interface, which currently reached its 3^rd revision, being able to achieve maximum speeds of up to 600 MB/s, as opposed to the IDE interface, which can reach a maximum of 133 MB/s.

It is not uncommon for manufacturers to include SATA ports of different revisions, such as two SATA2 ports and two SATA3 ports. Considering the fact that most optical drives on the market come with a SATA connector, and these devices are not bandwidth-hungry, using a SATA2 port for an optical drive is perfectly acceptable. In fact, most mechanical hard drives cannot achieve SATA3 speeds due to mechanical limitations, so unless you plan to use multiple high-performance solid state drives in your PC, which can benefit of the higher speeds of SATA3, a combination of SATA2 and SATA3 shouldn’t make much of a difference. If you’re not familiar with the differences between classical hard drives and solid state drives, check out this computer essentials online course – you might find out some more interesting information about computers along the way.

BIOS Chip and Battery

The BIOS chip contains the basic code needed to take your computer through the boot process, up to the point where the operating system takes over. Since the BIOS code is stored on a memory chip that needs constant power to function, a battery is also present to keep the chip powered when the computer is unplugged.

Northbridge and Southbridge

If you have a look at your motherboard, chances are you’ll see a square metal component somewhere in the lower-right part of the board. This metal component is actually a heatsink, and its role is to provide thermal protection for the Northbridge – one of the most important components of a motherboard. The northbridge is responsible for coordinating the data flow between the memory, the video card and the processor. A secondary chip, known as Southbridge, has a similar function, coordinating the data flow between the processor and peripherals such as sound cards or network cards.