The Insides of a Computer - What everything means
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The Motherboard:
The second most important hardware component is the motherboard. The motherboard is the largest component that connects all of the other parts of a computer together: your hard drives, CD/DVD burners, the CPU, RAM, video card, sound card, Ethernet (your internet connector, not your modem). There are 2 subcomponents of a motherboard: the northbridge and southbridge.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/98/Motherboard_diagram.png
The NorthBridge is a chip on the motherboard that relays information from the RAM and/or video card to the CPU. The Northbridge also links with the SouthBridge which controls your hard drives, sound card, DVD drive and other ports such as USB for your mouse and keyboard.
For the most part, all modern motherboards contain at least a 5.1 surround sound (5.1 surround sound is a front center, front left, front right, rear right and rear left speakers with a subwoofer) card built in which makes it 1 less item to buy.
Remember, not all motherboards look like this. Here is mine.
A: CPU slot
B: Northbridge
C: Southbridge
D: RAM slots or DIMMs
E: SATA
F: 24-pin power connector to power supply
G: IDE connector
H: Floppy drive connector
I: Power connectors for case
J: PCIe16 slots (blue)
K: PCI slots (white)
L: PCIe4 slot (black)
M: USB/Firewire connectors for case
Z: I/O Ports
If you need help with acronyms, please visit the last page, our acronym page.
There are also different sized motherboards that may or may not contain additional features. An ATX motherboard is a full sized motherboard (please refer to the picture above with the labels) that has multiple video card slots, at least 4 slots for RAM, and multiple expansion slots. A micro-ATX motherboard is slightly smaller and usually has 1 video card slot, at least 2 slots for RAM and far fewer expansion slots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Asus_a8n_VMCSM02.jpg
MicroATX Motherboard
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