Our computers are designed for expandability through the use of expansion cards. In this video, you’ll learn about sound cards, video adapters, capture cards, network interface cards, and best practices for installing new drivers.
Our modern computers are designed to be modular. We have ways to extend the functionality of our computer by adding additional hardware onto the motherboard itself. We’re able to do this through the use of expansion cards. These are cards that provide additional functionality that’s not already available on the motherboard itself. So we can get a generic motherboard and then customize it to do exactly what we need it to do.
We’ve designed these expansion cards to be installable by the end user. So you don’t have to take your computer back to the manufacturer to have these installed. You can open up the top of your computer and install the card yourself. And the process is relatively simple. You can install the hardware in your computer, turn it on, and most of the time your operating system will automatically identify the card, install the proper device drivers that you need, and you’re immediately able to use your new hardware.
A good example of an expansion card you might add to your system is one for audio. This is a sound card, and it can provide audio output that is far superior to what you might have on your motherboard. This might include specialized hardware to give you higher quality audio, or it may have additional output functions that you can plug in a home theater with multiple speakers and a subwoofer.
These audio cards might also provide input. So you might want to plug-in multiple audio sources from different devices. You might have musical instruments you’d like to plug in, or there may be multiple microphones. Here’s a sound card that supports a number of different inputs, outputs, and formats. We have audio output on left and right channels, a headphone input, a line input, and then a digital audio output.
The CPUs of many motherboards support an integrated graphics function that is built into the CPU itself. But if you’re doing some type of high-end graphics processing, video editing, or gaming, you may want a discrete graphics adapter. This is a graphics processing unit that is external to your central processing unit. This separate graphics card provides additional CPU power and memory so that you can perform the highest end graphics functions on your system.
The connectors associated with the integrated graphics inside of a CPU can often be found directly connected to the motherboard. We can see some of those here. There’s a VGA, DVI, and an HDMI interface, and they are all connected directly to this motherboard. A separate discrete graphics card or GPU has a connection that fits directly into the motherboard, and it has its own video output on the card itself.
A discrete graphics card is usually designed for outputting video. But often, you might want to have video input into your computer, and you can do that using a capture card. This might come from a separate video source, such as a camera, or you may be connecting separate computers as video input into your computer.
When you’re dealing with video, there is a lot of data that is being transferred. So most of these capture cards will have very high throughputs, and they’re usually connected directly to the PCI express bus. Here’s an example of a video capture card. This one supports video input over HDMI and SDI, which is a serialized form of video input, and it connects directly to the PCI Express bus.
Although we’ll often connect the networks wirelessly, there may be an occasion where you want to physically connect to a wired ethernet connection, and some motherboards may not have an ethernet jack built into the motherboard itself. Or perhaps the ethernet connection on your motherboard is no longer operating. If either of those happens to be the case, you may want to install a separate network interface card. You might also want to install one of these NICs if you’re installing a server, some type of security device, or anything else that needs multiple ethernet connections.
And of course, the process for installing a network interface card is exactly the same as any other adapter card. Once you find an open slot on your motherboard, you can install the card, and then restart your system and install the proper hardware drivers. If you’re installing into a server, you might need a card that supports multiple ethernet connections, and you can do that by installing a multi-port ethernet card. This multi-port card supports four separate ethernet connections in one slot of your motherboard.
When you’re trying to find the right adapter card, you may want to check a number of different sources to find the one that’s right for you. For example, you might want to start with your motherboard documentation to confirm that you have the right number and type of interfaces. Then you’ll want to check with the manufacturer of the adapter card to see what the minimum hardware and software requirements are to use that particular hardware.
You might also want to look into the knowledge base from the manufacturer to see if there might be things that you haven’t thought of yet. And of course, you could ask others who are using this adapter what they’ve seen with this hardware.
Some hardware requires you to install a driver before you install the hardware, and other adapter cards require you to install the driver after you install the hardware. Make sure you check the documentation for your adapter card to see what the proper process is for that hardware.
In many cases, you’ll find that the device driver is installed automatically once you install the hardware, but you’ll want to confirm that with the documentation prior to starting up your system. You then might want to check the manufacturer’s website and make sure that you’re using the latest version of device drivers. If you’re using a previous version, you may need to manually uninstall that device driver before installing the newer version.
Sometimes this is done through the Windows front end, and other times the manufacturer has their own process for installing the device driver. You can use Windows Device Manager to both install the driver and check the status of the driver once the system is booted. You’ll then be able to see the device driver details and see if the driver is working properly with your new hardware.