In case we are building a PC on our own, the types of motherboards that we describe in this article are the ones that you will find most often, since most of the towers and different PC cases are designed for them. So in case you want to update your computer without changing the case, you will have to make sure that the new motherboard is compatible and therefore can be mounted.
With that said, let’s go through the different variations one by one and see how they differ.
ATX type motherboard
This is the most classic type of motherboard, its acronym comes from the fact that PCs with the Intel 286 received the nickname AT, when in 1995 the real boom in clones or compatible PCs came thanks to the name of Windows 95 motherboards came to be called ATX, where X is the dimension of Enhanced or Improved in English, since then they have become the quintessential standard and the most used type of motherboard.
The dimensions of this motherboard format are 305 x 244 mm, although these may vary slightly. The name ATX is also given to the power supplies that accompany this type of motherboard. In addition, all types of ATX derived motherboards are designed to work with their type of power supply, in addition to meeting the details with the seven expansion bays with 20mm differentiation between them.
The ATX standard, being the most used, is constantly being revised, but not in terms of sizes, but to incorporate changes in the form of new expansion and power ports, as well as the removal of those that have become obsolete. . Ultimately, it’s important that the different parts can be placed in a logical and consistent way, but at the same time, the different components don’t mess around.
Micro ATX, the small form factor
The first variant of the ATX format was the so-called Micro ATX and as you might have guessed from the name, this is a more compact version of the type of motherboard we talked about in the previous section. The dimensions of your motherboards are 244 x 244 mm and this changes the position of the extension bays of the case relative to the motherboard.
So that the four exercises The upper ones usually coincide with those on the ATX motherboard and therefore have a gap of 20mm between them, but in the lower two the space is narrower. This is not a problem, as the vast majority of PC users do not use the full scalability of an ATX. Especially low-end desktops used in offices and schools where they are usually not extensive. Today, they are the most widely used type of motherboard for PC gaming, mainly due to the fact that they offer the necessary level of configuration and expansion.
Mini-ITX, for compact PCs
Regarding the creation of small desktop PCs, we have the so-called Mini-ITX motherboards, which are not an ATX derivative, since this type was created in 2001 by VIA Technologies. It is a motherboard of 170x170mm and their small size usually means they bring in fewer components than the types of motherboards we discussed earlier, but the integration of components has made them just as good in this regard as ATX and its derivatives over time.
It is its small size that causes some problems when assembling some components, including cooling systems such as radiators and heat sinks, which are designed for ATX and Micro-ATX type systems. You can also find graphics cards of more compact size and therefore narrower in length, which are designed for Mini-ITX boxes.
Although one can find towers that support a Mini-ITX plate, since its four holes generally coincide with the four on the left and the central part used by the plates in ATX format, its use in a case for ATX or Micro -ATX is a waste of your space. Therefore, they are recommended for creating HTPC or other compact systems where space is a luxury and it is necessary to make the most of it and where only smaller power supplies can be installed.
E-ATX, for the high end
The last type we are going to discuss goes to the extreme, since we have gone from the bigger to the smaller, but when we talk about the type E-ATX we are faced with motherboards which are not intended for use in ordinary PCs, as they are used both in workstations and in small servers.
As you might have deduced, its size is even bigger than the ATX, and the E in its name stands for Extended and indeed the size of this type of motherboard is 305 x 330 mm, which allows you to have more components such as more than one CPU socket inside, more DIMMs to have more memory channels, and so on.
This is not a commonly used format and leads to mounting issues for many PC cases, so if you are interested in mounting a workstation or server at home you should take a look. to the specifications of the tower you are going to use. to find out if you will be able to use this type of motherboard.
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