This is one of the most important parts of a PC and plays a crucial part in determining the performance of your PC. A motherboard is basically a large circuit board inside your computer that houses almost all components inside your computer and interconnects them. It forms more than 90% of your PC. Thus it is very necessary for this component to be of top most quality. It is the motherboard which determines what type of RAM it will take (as discussed above) and also, how much. It also determines the configuration of the rest of your PC.
Like your PC is identified by the processor it uses, the motherboard
is identified by the chipset it uses. A chipset is actually a set of two
or more (mainly two) chips that govern the entire functioning of the motherboard.
They also help the processor interface with the rest of the components
such as the USB, disk drives, COM ports, etc. The motherboard contains
many devices, which are discussed below:
Slots:
Generally the motherboard consists of many 'slots' which are actually a kind of a socket onto which additional devices can be fixed. A common example is an AGP slot (AGP stands for Accelerated Graphics Port) which is a slot where your video card sits in. It is a dark brown slot which is seen some where in the middle of your motherboard (If your PC is a Pentium - II and above). Another slot commonly available is the PCI slot (PCI stands for Peripheral Component Interconnect). These sockets are usually used for installing soundcards, SCSI interface, TV tuner cards, etc. These are white in color and are situated just below the AGP slot. The third type of slot is the ISA slot. ISA stands for International Systems Architecture. This technology is outdated now and is rarely seen on newer motherboard. This slot is a long black colored situated below the PCI slot.
BIOS:
Another important feature of the motherboard is the BIOS, which is an acronym for Basic Input Output System. This is a ROM chip on which data required for the initialization of the computer after reboot is permanently stored. It often called the CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor). It contains algorithms, which carry out routines to check for the proper functioning of each and every device inside the computer. This component governs all the I/O related activities of the PC. This is perhaps the most sensitive part of the motherboard as it very sensitive to electrostatic discharge. It contains information about your hard disk, processor and many critical settings that are required by the PC to work properly.
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