The average desktop PC has over 10 different types of connections and often sports over 30 individual sockets. Whether you're wanting to sort out SATA from M.2, or DVI-D from DisplayPort, welcome to our quick guide to sockets and ports.
TechSpot's Quick Guide to Sockets and Ports
- Thread starter neeyik
- Start date
Endymio
Posts: 2,666 +2,696
Excellent article as usual, @neeyik ... though I did wonder at your temerity of stating that LGA provides better pin protection than PGA. While true, it veers dangerously close to dissing AMD, which of course is verboten. The rejoinder about clamping force favoring PGA may be too little, too late.
veLa
Posts: 1,243 +985
These articles are really beneficial for those who are just coming around to building their own IT skills, and even a seasoned individual can pick up a thing or two that they may have have forgotten.
I still have to go through and read all of the article.
I wanted to say, "Socket to me baby." before someone else did
I wanted to say, "Socket to me baby." before someone else did
gigantor21
Posts: 379 +713
MarkHughes
Posts: 341 +345
Doh! You’re quite right and I clearly had a ‘senior moment’ there, with USB on my brain
I’ll amend the piece accordingly, as soon as I can.Many thanks for the feedback, folks.
MarkHughes
Posts: 341 +345
Doh! You’re quite right and I clearly had a ‘senior moment’ there, with USB on my brain
Many thanks for the feedback, folks.
No problem at all, I'm, slightly disappointed to find this isn't a thing now though... For a moment I thought I had missed news of an awesome new feature.
Given that NVMe is slowly replacing SATA, and it does provide power, it’s unlikely that SATA will ever get updated to do so. Shame really because it’d make so a big difference to the cabling mess, jammed down the back of my PC case.
Being an audio geek I'd say I'm pretty familiar with all the audio jacks and I'd like to add some note regarding audio jacks: there are 2 ways to transmit audio signal: by analog signal (3.5mm jack) or digital signal (toslink / coaxial / hdmi or displayport)
Analog signals are typically transmitted by 3.5mm jack which typically carries maximum of 2-channel (2.0) signal. Or in recent laptops as stereo + mono microphone. Therefore if you want 5.1 (6-channel) sound you'll need 3x 3.5mm jack assigned to those speakers.
Digital signals are not as simple, as there are 3 distinct format available: uncompressed PCM, encoded Dolby or encoded DTS. With HDMI / DP you can freely select each of those format, either as compressed or uncompressed depending on your audio equipment. So far there are no limitations on how many channel it can supports, from 2.0, 5.1, 7.1 to more.
Older interfaces such as Toslink (Toshiba Link) with fiber optic and Coaxial both use same SPDIF standard (that's Sony Philips Digital Interface). This standard has only enough bandwidth for 2.0 uncompressed PCM signal. That being said Dolby and DTS both has figured out a way to overcome this limitation by encoding a compressed 5.1 signal. Dolby named theirs AC3 and DTS named theirs DTS. The problem was, most of the sound coming from your computer (playing music, youtube videos and games) are PCM, not DTS or AC3 typically found in DVDs. So many people were left confused when their brand new audio equipment only plays in stereo (2.0) instead.
The solutions for 5.1 over SPDIF are either by making a fake 5.1 through the available 2.0 channel aka upmix (Dolby ProLogic or DTS Neo) or by using software to encode these uncompressed PCM into compressed AC3 or DTS (Dolby Digital Live or DTS Interactive) in realtime. Your audio equipment will then decode the supported signal and play the audio accordingly.
Analog signals are typically transmitted by 3.5mm jack which typically carries maximum of 2-channel (2.0) signal. Or in recent laptops as stereo + mono microphone. Therefore if you want 5.1 (6-channel) sound you'll need 3x 3.5mm jack assigned to those speakers.
Digital signals are not as simple, as there are 3 distinct format available: uncompressed PCM, encoded Dolby or encoded DTS. With HDMI / DP you can freely select each of those format, either as compressed or uncompressed depending on your audio equipment. So far there are no limitations on how many channel it can supports, from 2.0, 5.1, 7.1 to more.
Older interfaces such as Toslink (Toshiba Link) with fiber optic and Coaxial both use same SPDIF standard (that's Sony Philips Digital Interface). This standard has only enough bandwidth for 2.0 uncompressed PCM signal. That being said Dolby and DTS both has figured out a way to overcome this limitation by encoding a compressed 5.1 signal. Dolby named theirs AC3 and DTS named theirs DTS. The problem was, most of the sound coming from your computer (playing music, youtube videos and games) are PCM, not DTS or AC3 typically found in DVDs. So many people were left confused when their brand new audio equipment only plays in stereo (2.0) instead.
The solutions for 5.1 over SPDIF are either by making a fake 5.1 through the available 2.0 channel aka upmix (Dolby ProLogic or DTS Neo) or by using software to encode these uncompressed PCM into compressed AC3 or DTS (Dolby Digital Live or DTS Interactive) in realtime. Your audio equipment will then decode the supported signal and play the audio accordingly.
Tyler Dur Den
Posts: 17 +16
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