MOTHERBOARDS

- contains the CPU*
- Amount of RAM it supports; suggested more RAM* than needed.
- contains PCI* slots.
- also contains several other ports including; SATA, RAID, USB* and Firwire ports.
- some motherboards have bulit in sound and video characteristics, but in some others you will have to install them into the CPU itself
- may include: hard drives, optical disk, a video and sound card and a floppy disk
- it allows all parts of the computer to communicate with each other and recieve power.
- The physical boards that shelters the computer's main circuits and somponents including the CPU
- It is the system that puts your whole computer together, and presents you with a live computer.
- Components that a motherboard may contain are, your CPU, Memory, expansion cards eg graphics controller, hard drive, connectors, and other external ports.
- the first motherboard only had a few components, some which only had a proccesor and card
slots.


example of a modern motherboard:
Processor Socket: Socket for the microprocessor, determines the kind of CPU your motherboard uses.
PCI- Peripheral Component Interconnect: connections for video, sound and picture cards also network cards.
AGP- Accelerated Graphics Port: port for video cards
IDE- Integrated Drive Electronics: interfaces for the hard drives
RAM- Random Access Memory: Provides space for your computer to read write the data being used by the CPU.
CPU- Central Proccessing Unit: It is the most important part of the computer, where most computer calculations take place.
SATA- Serial Advanced Technology Attachment: It is a computer bus host connector to storage devices such as hard disk drives and optical drives.
RAID- Redundant Array Of Independent Disks: Technology that provides extra storage reliabilty through redundancy.
USB- Universal Serial Bus: A preffered connection method for technology.