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Motherboards

A motherboard is the central circuit board in any computer, which is also referred to as a logic board in Apple computers. Every component connects to the motherboard, some directly onto it like processors, video cards, and memory. While others connect via ribbon cables like hard disks and dvd-roms, and keyboards and a mouse by other cables, or power connectors. Motherboards are available in a range of form factors, which fit into a corresponding case size. Some of the most popular form factors have been PC/XT, AT, Baby AT, ATX, ETX, Mini-ATX, Micro-ATX, LPX, NLX, BTX and WTX. All these form factors are desktop computer form factors, laptops generally use customised form factors designed by the manufacturers, which means repairs and upgrading are very difficult and expensive. Motherboards also feature a BIOS, which stands for Basic Input/Output System. Generally loaded up from flash memory it boots up when the computer is turned on and prepares the way so other software programs can be loaded and executed from devices like hard disks, cd-roms and floppy disks. A motherboard will only support specific types of components, therefore if your upgrading your video card, memory or CPU it is vitally important to make sure your motherboard supports it. Motherboards can also come with built in sound and graphics capabilities, however they are never usually of a high standard.