What is Motherboard?
The motherboard is the main component of your computer. It
is often called the mainboard, or "mobo" for short.
It's basically a large circuit board that fits into the computer case and it's where all the computer components connects.
Components of Motherboard
There's the CPU socket. A CPU socket is where the CPU or central processing unit is located.
There's the memory slots and this is where the primary memory DIMM modules known as RAM are inserted, and there is also the bus slots or expansion slots. They are used to install various components to add functionality to your computer, such as: Video card, sound card, network card, etc.
Then there's also the SATA connectors, and this is where you would attach your storage devices, such as SSDs or hard drives.
Motherboards will have several of these connectors, so you can attach multiple storage drives.
On some modern motherboards you might find the M.2 slot. This is a new slot for connecting an M.2 solid-state drive. And you'll also find the PCH or platform controller hub, which has taken the role of Intel's earlier chipset architecture, is the most recent.
Now on older motherboards there would be a couple of chips on the motherboard called a chipset. There is a Northbridge chip and a Southbridge chip. These chips would have different functions. Now the Northbridge, which was located on a northern or upper portion of the motherboard, acted like a middleman between the CPU, PCI express bus, and memory. The Southbridge which was located on a southern or lower portion of the motherboard, it was in charge of standard PCI slots, SATA ports, USB ports, etc.
Also, Southbridge functionality is now handled entirely by the Platform Controller Hub chip. So in order for the CPU to communicate with these lower interfaces, it had to go through the south-bridge. But now it's been replaced by the platform controller hub chip.
The PCH architecture integrates most of the Northbridge functionality into the CPU. The Northbridge chip has been eliminated completely. Now motherboards come with several input/output interfaces and these interfaces are largely located on the rear motherboard's panel input or output. So for example, the most common interface on a motherboard is a USB port. USB stands for universal serial bus and there are several USB ports in motherboard, because there are so many different peripherals that utilize the USB interface. Such as keyboards, cameras, mice, printers and external drives.
Now the majority of USB ports are mounted in the rear Input/output panel and some are located on the surface of the motherboard. Built-in video adapter is also present in some of the motherboards. This is called integrated video because the video adapter and motherboard essentially form one unit.
Older motherboards would have either a DVI or VGA port, while modern motherboards will have an HDMI port or a Display-Port.
Now integrated video adapters are not very powerful. For normal everyday use of light applications, these are great. However, it may not be sufficient for graphics-intensive applications such as games. That is why most of the people will bypass the integrated video and get an expansion video card which has enough power to fulfill their requirements.
Some other things that would appear on a rear input/output panel is the network interface card. This port is designed for an The computer is connected to a network using an Ethernet connection and an RJ-45 socket. There's also a sound card. Just like integrated video, if a motherboard has a built-in sound card then this is known as integrated sound.
A sound card helps processes audio by speakers of the computer. Now motherboards come in different shapes and sizes. This is known as a form factor.
Types of Motherboard
The most common motherboard form factor that's used in PCs today is ATX (advanced technology extended). It was created in 1995 and is now the de facto standard form factor for PCs today. A full-size ATX motherboard is 12 x 9.6 inches.
Now prior to the ATX was the AT (advanced technology) form factor. This was used in the 1980s and was developed by IBM AT motherboards are 12 x 13.8 inches in size and they are no longer in development since the succession of the ATX.
Micro ATX is an additional ATX motherboard variant. Micro ATX motherboards are smaller than ATX boards as its name suggests. Micro ATX boards are 9.6 x 9.6 inches. So it's a square design compared to the standard rectangular design of the ATX.
These boards are cheaper than ATX boards and were designed to fit in smaller computer cases They also have fewer features and consume less power than a standard ATX board.