Knowing The Computer Components - Motherboard

           A motherboard or mainboard, system board, planar board or logic board or colloquially is the main printed circuit board (PCB) found in computers and other expandable systems. It holds many of the crucial electronic components of the system, such as the central processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for other peripherals. Unlike a backplane, a motherboard contains significant sub-systems such as the processor and other components.
       A typical desktop computer has its microprocessor, main memory, and other essential components connected to the motherboard. Other components such as external storage, controllers for video display and sound, and peripheral devices may be attached to the motherboard as plug-in cards or via cables, in modern computers it is increasingly common to integrate some of these peripherals into the motherboard itself.
          An important component of a motherboard is the microprocessor's supporting chipset, which provides the supporting interfaces between the CPU and the various buses and external components. This chipset determines, to an extent, the features and capabilities of the motherboard.

Modern motherboards include:

• Sockets (or slots) in which one or more microprocessors may be installed. In the case of CPUs in BGA packages, such as the VIA C3, the CPU is directly soldered to the motherboard.[citation needed]
• Slots into which the system's main memory is to be installed (typically in the form of DIMM modules containing DRAM chips)
• A chipset which forms an interface between the CPU's front-side bus, main memory, and peripheral buses
• Non-volatile memory chips (usually Flash ROM in modern motherboards) containing the system's firmware or BIOS
• A clock generator which produces the system clock signal to synchronize the various components
• Slots for Expansion card (the interface to the system via the buses supported by the chipset)
• Power connectors, which receive electrical power from the computer power supply and distribute it to the CPU, chipset, main memory, and expansion cards.
• Additionally, nearly all motherboards include logic and connectors to support commonly used input devices, such as PS/2 connectors for a mouse and keyboard.