What you need to know when purchasing a laptop's Motherboard

For users of laptop, the term Motherboard should not be unknown. It is the main circuit board, which supplies power to the computer and makes connections to the various components providing different functions. No laptop would work without a laptop motherboard. It is not very costly but it is an essential component of your laptop.

These laptop motherboards would last as long as your computer and they are upgradeable too. Its memory could be increased or some new features could be added. But, sometimes, laptop motherboard needs to be replaced for certain features that would not be available using the old motherboard.

When you are going to buy a new laptop motherboard, you should take care of following points:

CPU compatibility

Motherboards are generally of two types. One type uses Intel processors while the other type use AMD processors. Therefore, a motherboard for AMD processor would not work if you want use Intel processor. Even if, you are using the same processor as the board is meant for, the speed of the processor is another factor to be kept in mind. Every motherboard would work with processors of definite processor speed. They will not work, if you want to use processors of different speeds than it is designed for. For an example, a motherboard would work with processors with speeds between 1.0 GHz to 2.0 GHz. But, you may require a new laptop motherboard if want to use a processor of higher speed. Therefore, changing CPU of your computer might require you to replace the motherboard too.

RAM compatibility

There are different types of RAM used these days. This is because they use different technology for their functioning. They could be SDRAM, DDR or RDRAM. Motherboards use only a specific type of RAM. There could be a size limit for each type of RAM being used. The limit could also depend on the type of motherboard used.

Video Card and Hard Drive compatibility

There are different kinds of Video Cards used in computers. Most common Video Cards are AGP and PCI Express. AGP is the older one and has many variations such as AGP 4x, AGP 8x. PCI Express, being newer in use, does not yet have many variations.

Motherboards could use older versions of Video Card but it is not vice versa. AGP 4x card could be used on a board meant for AGP 8x. But AGP 8x could not be used on a laptop motherboard meant for AGP 4x.

Similarly, there are different types of Hard Drive interfaces used by a motherboard. These interfaces are mutually exclusive and cannot be used for any other Hard Drive using different interface. These interfaces are ATE, SATA and SCSI.

Front Side Bus or FSB

Proper selection of Front Side Bus is very important as communication speed between RAM and CPU depends on this feature. Otherwise, this could become a bottleneck in the performance of your laptop.

Motherboards have some built-in features like Audio, LAN and Video. While selecting new motherboard, these features also should be considered.

This is, in a nutshell, what you should consider while purchasing a new laptop motherboard.

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