Motherboards - PC Based

A motherboard is a printed circuit board used in a personal computer. It is also known as the mainboard and occasionally abbreviated to mobo or MB. The term mainboard is also used for the main circuit board in this and other electronic devices.

A typical motherboard provides attachment points for one or more of the following: CPU, graphics card, sound card, hard disk controller, memory (RAM), and external peripheral devices.

All of the basic circuitry and components required for a computer to function sit either directly on the motherboard or in an expansion slot of the motherboard. The most important component on a motherboard is the chipset which consists of two components or chips known as the Northbridge and Southbridge. These chips determine, to an extent, the features and capabilities of the motherboard.

The remainder of this article discusses the state of the so-called "IBM compatible PC" motherboard in the early 2000s. It contains the chipset, which controls the operation of the CPU, the PCI, ISA, AGP, and PCI Express expansion slots, and (usually) the IDE/ATA controller as well. Most of the devices that can be attached to a motherboard are attached via one or more slots or sockets, although some modern motherboards support wireless devices using the IrDA, Bluetooth, or 802.11 (Wi-Fi) protocols.