Motherboards

[Annabell]

Motherboards

A motherboard is also known as a main board, system board and logic board. A common abbreviation is "mobo" they can be found in all computers, it is the central circuit board of your computer. All other components and peripherals plug into it, and the job of the motherboard is to relay information between them all.

A motherboard houses the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), which is the simple software run by a computer when initially turned on. Other components attach directly to it, such as the memory, CPU (Central Processing Unit), graphics card, sound card, hard-drive, disk drives, along with various external ports and peripherals.

There are a lot of motherboards on the market to choose from. The big question is, how do you go about choosing which one is right for you? different motherboards support different components, and so it is vital you make a number of decisions concerning general system specifications before you can pick the right motherboard, what type of Computer do you want to build, an Intel based or AMD based "the two most common".

If you purchase your case before the rest of the components, the first factor to think about concerning motherboards is the size, or form factor, a form factor is a standardized motherboard size, if you think about fitting a motherboard in a case, there are a number of mounting holes, slot locations and PSU connectors - 20 pin and mostly now 24 pin. The most popular motherboard form factor today is ATX, which evolved from it's predecessor, the Baby AT, a smaller version of the AT (Advanced Technology) form factor. Nowadays a standard computer will have an ATX form factor motherboard: only special cases require different form factors, (some form factors below, and please do consult the information within the link also below as this is from Wikipedia and is updated regularly). Picture of a Motherboard and link below

Some Form Factors

Motherboard

Motherboard Form Factor Link > Wikipedia

[yatik]

Missed one. Mini ITX. Miniture in comparison to a normal Motherboard.