Discussing the selection of desktop motherboards from the perspective of electronic components

When ordinary people buy a laptop, they can only weigh the brand, appearance, configuration, after-sales service and other aspects to choose a laptop they like. They have no way to go deep into the internal structure, understand the circuit design and component selection. This is true for both novices and experts.

But DIY desktops are very different. I believe everyone has experienced and carefully studied and compared, and finally selected a motherboard. When buying a motherboard, novice friends mainly consider the brand and price or simply ask friends to buy it; digital enthusiasts will study the market reputation and evaluation, and then study the CPU, memory, chipset and other internal information by themselves. In this way, they can basically buy a motherboard that they think is good; and those who are proficient in the electronics industry are very different. In addition to the above, they can also go deep into the selection of specific electronic components to judge the quality of the motherboard, so as to buy a truly good motherboard. Of course, the premise is that we compare motherboards of the same price.

Below, the author will first briefly introduce how to choose a desktop motherboard from several basic aspects, and then teach you in detail from a more professional electronic component perspective to understand the quality and sophistication of the motherboard.

First of all, I won’t say much about the choice of brand. You can refer to other articles on the Internet for the evaluation and reputation of motherboards of various brands. Secondly, let’s consider the configuration issue. The most critical thing is the CPU model supported by the motherboard. Before you buy it, you must basically determine your consumption direction. INTEL’s CPU is much more expensive than AMD ’s CPU; then we look at the model of the north and south bridge chipset. Generally speaking, the one that uses INTEL’s latest platform is the first choice, and the layout is reasonable. I won’t talk about the specific model here because the article is time-sensitive; the size of the memory capacity is a factor that affects the performance of the motherboard. When purchasing, you should look at the maximum capacity of a single slot; check whether all the mainstream interfaces are complete and the distribution is reasonable; the compatibility of the motherboard and its upgrade capability; finally, consider after-sales service.

Well, the above are some basic methods for choosing a motherboard. As long as you spend some time, these knowledge are easy for computer enthusiasts to understand and master. Next, I will introduce the judgment of the quality of the motherboard from a more professional perspective. Here we must remember a principle: the quality of the motherboard is best reflected in the selection of electronic components.

1. PCB board

Judging by naked eyes, the one with more layers is preferred, or it can be basically equivalent to the thickness of the PCB board. Then look at the insulating ink covering the board, and the one with high brightness and traditional dark green is preferred. This is relatively easy to do. When choosing, just make more comparisons.

2. Capacitance

We have no way to judge the brand, capacitance and other parameters of the small-sized chip capacitors on the motherboard, so we mainly observe the large pin capacitors, which are mainly distributed in the main power module and CPU power module. This is not difficult to judge. Just find the capacitor group standing in the high-rise buildings. In terms of materials, solid electrolytic capacitors are the best. The capacitors marked in blue in the figure below are basically packaged in aluminum shells. However, in the current market, some unscrupulous manufacturers, in order to confuse their products, also put aluminum shells on ordinary liquid electrolytic capacitors to achieve the purpose of passing inferior products off as good ones. As shown in the figure below, the aluminum shell capacitor marked in black is a liquid electrolytic capacitor that looks very similar to a solid electrolytic capacitor. This is more commonly used on some cheap motherboards.

Therefore, if we are not able to distinguish between real and fake solid capacitors, we can directly look at motherboards that use liquid electrolytic capacitors. Generally speaking, the best brands of liquid electrolytic capacitors are Nichicon , Rubycon, and Sanyo Chemicon , as shown in the figure below. Then consider popular brands such as Taicon, Nippon, and Jackcon. When purchasing, pay attention to the characters on the capacitors, which usually have the brand name written on them.

3. Mosfet

Generally, when a motherboard burns out, the first thing that maintenance personnel check is the MOSFET. A MOSFET of poor quality will be very hot to the touch when used for a long time, and may even burn out. Therefore, when purchasing a motherboard and observing the MOSFET, it is best to consider brands such as Philips, Infineon, and IR, and then consider brands such as Alpha, ST, and ON. As shown in the figure below:

4. Inductor and inductor coil

It is not easy to identify the brand of inductor and inductor coil. The inductor is fully enclosed and has excellent performance. The larger the wire diameter of the inductor coil, the better the performance. As shown in the figure below:

5. Overcurrent protection components

Many manufacturers will save this part when designing in order to save costs, which is related to the design concept. If we disassemble Japanese electronic products, no matter what kind, we will basically find overcurrent protection components, and even use several of them. This is entirely determined by the design attitude. Chinese products do not focus on protection, while European and American products focus on protecting the entire machine and personal safety. Japanese products pay great attention to protecting personal safety. So if you find that overcurrent protection components are used on the motherboard, usually used in power interfaces, hot-swap interfaces, etc., then just put them on the candidate list. Commonly used overcurrent protection components include fuses and self-recovery thermistors, etc. The first-tier manufacturers are AEM, TYCO, Littelfuse, Bussmann, followed by Taiwan's Gongde, Dayi, etc. As shown in the figure below, the white device above the interface is a fuse:

6. Electrostatic protection devices

The interfaces on the motherboard that need electrostatic protection are nothing more than various interfaces. Now technology is constantly improving, and various interfaces have emerged one after another, such as high-definition HDMI interface , AV interface, USB 2.0, USB3.0, Ethernet interface, headphone, microphone interface, etc. Because it is necessary to frequently plug and unplug, the static electricity carried by the human body is extremely harmful to the motherboard. Once the motherboard is damaged, it is basically chip-level repair, which costs money and time. Therefore, for electronic products, electrostatic protection is essential. When purchasing a motherboard, pay more attention to the position of the interface. AEM, TYCO, NXP, and ON are the preferred brands of electrostatic protection components, as shown in the following figure:

7. Lightning protection devices

Desktop computers are most afraid of lightning strikes in the summer. A well-designed motherboard must consider adding lightning protection devices, such as gas discharge tubes, TVS, varistors, etc. This ensures that you can continue chatting, browsing the web, playing games, etc. during the summer thunderstorm season. Brands that are preferred include EPCOS, TYCO, etc., and secondly, domestic brands include Penang Electronics, etc. As shown in the figure below:

8. Power Management Chip

For a good motherboard, reasonable power distribution is essential. The power management chip is usually near the CPU socket and can be directly observed. The mainstream manufacturers are Intersil and Maxim. As shown in the figure below:

Conclusion: As long as you have a general grasp and understanding of the above-mentioned identification methods, I believe you will be able to choose a satisfactory, high-performance, and value-for-money motherboard!