It could've been just some other bad day when a stupefied power supplying late fried our Biostar Z97WE motherboard (pictured above). Only rather than simply chuck information technology in the trash and move on to a new same, we decided to rip IT divided piece by piece to show you—yes,you—some of the key hardware and technologies hiding inside that help motherboards serve well as the CNS of your PC.
Disclaimer: One motherboard was brutally dismembered in the qualification of this article. Let's dig in.
Laying waste RAM
Project by Thomas Ryan
The easiest parts to tear off a motherboard are the RAM slots. They're held on with small metal tabs that can be easy released from the undersurface of the motherboard. Upon removing the impressionable RAM expansion slot, you'll be able-bodied to realize the pins that lead improving from the motherboard and into the impressionable slot to make the electrical connection with the memory. The plastic slot itself is a rather sturdy device that you basically can't break with your custody.
Once you pull one Aries slot off of your motherboard, getting the other three off takes no sentence the least bit. Approximately motherboards get RAM slots of the same color. The Z97 Biostar motherboard we're literally tearing apart Hera is not one of those. It features alternating expansion slot colours: yellow and black.
PCI-weeeee
Image past Thomas Ryan
Next, we pulled off the PCI-E slots, which are used for connecting graphics cards and storage to your Personal computer. These slots were held on by the same small metal tabs atomic number 3 the RAM slots, but required a bit more force to remove—we had to use a screwdriver as a simple lever. Of path, with the PCI-E slots removed, there are fifty-fifty more unprotected pins protruding from the PCB of the motherboard, so be blow-by-blow if you try this at menage.
Spoilage the southbridge
Image by St. Thomas Ryan
Next, we used a screwdriver and a little of wiggling to extract the southbridge heatsink. The southbridge oversees a computer's input/output signal signals, like-minded USB, the organisation BIOS, PCI-E, and audio. Emblazoned with the Biostar logo, this low-profile heatsink cools the system of logic of Intel Z97 chipset.
Bringing up the rear
Visualize aside Thomas Ryan
This is the merchantman of the southbridge heatsink, leftover thermal paste and wholly.
The brains of the BIOS
Image by Thomas the doubting Apostle Ryan
Ungenerous the southbridge sits the retention chip that stores the BIOS for our Biostar motherboard. This particular chip sits in a small socket, which means it's technically a replaceable divide. This particular chip off's made by Winbond and has 64MB of memory.
Confirmed VRMs
Image by Lowell Jackson Thomas Ryan
Here's an important piece of motherboard computer hardware that we couldn't Northerner cancelled: the power delivery hardware, dubbed voltage regularization modules (VRMs). These greyish capacitors, dark grey ferrite chokes, and small black MOSFETS every work conjointly to make a point your CPU gets the duplicable power it needs to work correctly.
Taking the heat
Image aside Seth Thomas Ryan
The VRMs often get quite flaming while your PC's doing its thing. That's why high-end motherboards oft feature hefty heatsinks look-alike the ones we have here, which were pulled off the VRMs highlighted in the previous slide. You can still see the opinion of the MOSFETS in the squashy hot pads on top of these heatsinks.
Bricking the CPU bracket
Image away Thomas Ryan
We return to our responsible screwdriver to unseat the CPU retention bracket. True to the ideals of whatsoever good square bracket, this unmatchable's a stalwart lump of metal with a jimmy that puts pressure along the CPU to hold it firmly in the socket.
Bottom's up
Figure of speech by Thomas Ryan
Hither we have the underside of the CPU retention bracket out. Most aftermarket heatsinks admit a bracket that mounts to the underside of the Central processing unit socket. That would attach to this bracket.
Knocking down pins
Image past Norman Thomas Ryan
We didn't handle to rou the current Processor socket hit our motherboard but we did crush a couple of pins inside the socket—which reminded us that the pins in spite of appearanc of the socket are actually beautiful undiluted-looking.
On a virtual level, the pins connect the CPU to the motherboard, while the retention bracket out ensures the CPU maintains a tight connectedness to the socket pins, and is paint to swappable processors. If it weren't for the pins and the bracket, the processor would suffer to be soldered to the motherboard.
This is the end, comely protagonist
Image by Thomas Ryan
Eventually, we have our stripped-down motherboard. With everything removed, this once-powerful mobo looks rather pedestrian. The only real indication of what it once was are the lonely CMOS battery, the stacks of pins lined ascending where the slots used to sit, and all the bare chips surrounded past white squares on the surface of the PCB (which you lavatory't profligate off without doing of import damage).
Speaking of which, are you thirsting for more destruction? (You know, for science.) We've too cut up a memory stick to show you how RAM deeds.
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