Motherboard

This is the main board in a computer, it holds every component of a computer on it. It houses the CPU, memory and supplies power to every component from the Power Supply Unit. The motherboard has controllers on it that control where data goes, such as the memory controller that controls the data flowing into and out of the RAM.

There are several main ports on a motherboard; the pci express slots hold any graphics cards, these have 16 slots so 16 separate lanes for data transfer. PCI-E also offers SLI or Crossfire multi graphics cards setups. A motherboard also has several USB slots, these slots can be used to plug a whole range of different peripherals in but also can be used to plug in external storage such as a USB sticks. Several jack ports that are used for the different audio inputs available, ranging in colours to differentiate the different types. The motherboard houses almost all of the parts of a computer and powers all of them, the Power Supply Unit plugs into the motherboard and from there powers everything on it.

A motherboard also has a battery on it, a small watch battery. this is used to ensure that the internal clock and the bios are never out of power. If the battery runs out it has to be replaced and all the bios and internal clock settings will be wrong, this means you would have to re-set them up when you next turn on the pc.