Motherboard

Alternatively referred to as the mb, mainboard, mobo, mobd, backplane board, base board, planar board,system board, or logic board on Apple computers. The motherboard is a printed circuit that is the foundation of a computer and allows the CPU, RAM, and all other computer hardware components to function with each other. Below is a graphic illustration of the ASUS P5AD2-E motherboard and some basic explanations of each of the major portions of the motherboard. Clicking on the below image will give you a larger more detailed version of the below picture.

Motherboard components

Below is a listing of links that describe each of the above mentioned motherboard components in additional detail. Links are listed in clockwise order going from the top-left corner of the image. Components not listed above or found on other motherboards are listed in the next section.

1. Expansion slots
2.  (PCI Express, PCI, and AGP)
3. 3-pin case fan connectors
4. Back pane connectors
5. Heatsink
6. 4-Pin (P4) power connector
7. Inductor
8. Capacitor
9. CPU Socket
10. Northbridge
11. Screw hole
12. Memory slot
13. Super I/O
14. Floppy connection
15. ATA (IDE) disk drive primary connection
16. 24-pin ATX power Supply connector
17. Serial ATA connections
18. Coin cell battery (CMOS backup battery)
19. RAID
20. System panel connectors
21. FWH
22. Southbridge
23. Serial port connector
24. USB headers
25. Jumpers
26. Integrated circuit
27. 1394 headers
28. SPDIF
29. CD-IN

Other motherboard components

Below is a listing of other motherboard components that are not shown in the above small picture or have been part of older computer motherboards.

1. BIOS
2. Cache memory
3. Chipset
4. Diode
5. Dip switches
6. Electrolytic
7. Fuse
8. Game port and MIDI header
9. Internal speaker
10. LCC
11. Network header
12. Obsolete expansion slots (AMR, CNR, EISA, ISA, VESA)
13. Obsolete memory slots (SIMM)
14. Onboard LED
15. Parallel port header
16. PS/2 header
17. Resistor
18. Serial port header
19. Screw hole aka mounting hole
20. SCSI
21. Voltage regulator
22. Voltage regulator module (VRM)

Motherboard form factors

As computers advanced, so have motherboards. Below is a listing of the various motherboard form factors and additional information about each of these form factors including ATX the most commonly used motherboard form factor today.

1. AT
2. ATX
3. Baby AT
4. BTX
5. LPX
6. Full AT
7. Full ATX
8. microATX
9. NLX