What are the interfaces on motherboards?

The interfaces on the motherboard  are shown in figure 1.

Fig.1 SATA interface

1.SATA Interface

The SATA interface (figure 2) is the current mainstream hard disk interface for connecting serial hard drives and optical drives. The motherboard is usually equipped with 4 ~ 8 SATA interfaces. The speed of SATA 2.0 interface can reach 3GB / s, which is faster than that of IDE interface. Some motherboards also have SATA2.0 and SATA3.0 interfaces.

Fig.2 SATA interface

2.Power Interface

Motherboard power interface is divided into main power supply interface and small 12 V interface. The main power supply connection (Fig.3) is the common 20 / 24 pin interface.Including +12V,,+5V,+3.3V,-12V,5VSB, power supply good signal, PSON start signal, is the main source of mainboard power supply.Small 12V interface, also known as small 4P interface (figure 4), is a CPU independent 12V power supply interface.

Fig.3 ATX 24 pin interface Fig.4 small 12V interface

3.Fan interface

    When the motherboard works, CPU, North Bridge Chip, South Bridge Chip will generate heat. In order to prevent chip damage, the heat-emitting chip plus cooling fan for heat dissipation. The common CPU fan interface (see figure 5, represented by CPU_FAN > is used to connect the CPU fan, and the system fan interface (see figure 6, shown in SYS_FAN) is used to connect the cooling fan other than the CPU fan. There is only one system fan on the main board ofIntel and DELL brand machine. When the fan is not connected, the error will be reported when the fan is turned on. The ordinary motherboard without CPU fan will also report the error, and will prompt F1 to notify the user to install the fan.

Fig.5 CPU fan interface Fig.6 system fan interface

4.P/S2 Interface

The P/S2 interface (see figure 7) is mainly connected to the keyboard and mouse that are commonly described. Green for the mouse interface, blue for the keyboard interface. Some motherboards already use a two-in-one interface (see figure 8). Only one P/S2 interface device can be used and the other must use the USB interface. The new motherboard is no longer suitable for the P/S2 interface, all of which use the USB interface.

Fig.7 P/S2 interface Fig.8 P/S2 two-in-one interface