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The basic purpose of the motherboard is to provide the electrical and logical connections
by which the other components of the system communicate.
A typical desktop computer is built with the microprocessor, main memory, and other
essential components on the motherboard. Other components such as external storage,
controllers for video display and sound, and peripheral devices are typically attached to
the motherboard via edge connectors and cables, although in modern computers it is
increasingly common to integrate these "peripherals" into the motherboard.
Contents
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The modern ASRock K7VT4A Pro motherboard. The chipset on this board consists of
northbridge and southbridge chips.
The motherboard of a typical desktop consists of a large PCB. It holds electronic
components and interconnects, as well as physical connectors (sockets, slots, and
headers) into which other computer components may be inserted or attached.
The Octek Jaguar V motherboard from 1993[1]. This board has 5 ISA slots but few
onboard peripherals, as evidenced by the lack of external connectors.
Additionally, nearly all motherboards include logic and connectors to support commonly-
used input devices, such as PS/2 connectors for a mouse and keyboard. Early personal
computers such as the Apple II or IBM PC included only this minimal peripheral support
on the motherboard. Additional peripherals such as disk controllers and serial ports were
provided as expansion cards.
Given the high thermal design power of high-speed computer CPUs and components,
modern motherboards nearly always include heatsinks and mounting points for fans to
dissipate excess heat.
[edit] Integrated peripherals
With the steadily declining costs and size of integrated circuits, it is now possible to
include support for many peripherals on the motherboard. By combining many functions
on one PCB, the physical size and total cost of the system may be reduced; highly-
integrated motherboards are thus especially popular in small form factor and budget
computers.
For example, the ECS GeForce6100SM-M, a typical modern budget motherboard for
computers based on AMD processors, has on-board support for a very large range of
peripherals:
Expansion cards to support all of these functions would have cost hundreds of dollars
even a decade ago, however as of April 2007 such highly-integrated motherboards are
available for as little as $30 in the USA.
[edit] History
A modern motherboard by Universal Abit (IN9 32X SLI)[2]. Note the heatsinks for
cooling of motherboard components, and the large number of peripheral connectors and
components.
Prior to the advent of the Apple II in 1977, a computer was usually built in a case or
mainframe with components connected by a backplane consisting of set of slots
themselves connected with wires. The CPU, memory and I/O peripherals were housed on
individual PCBs or cards which plugged into the backplane.
With the arrival of the microprocessor, it became more cost-effective to place the
backplane connectors, processor and glue logic onto a single "mother" board, with video,
memory and I/O functions on "child" cards — hence the terms "motherboard" and
daughterboard. The Apple II computer featured a motherboard with 8 expansion slots.
During the late 1980 and 1990s, it became economical to move an increasing number of
peripheral functions onto the motherboard (see above). In the late 1980s, motherboards
began to include single ICs (called Super I/O chips) capable of supporting a set of low-
speed peripherals: keyboard, mouse, floppy disk drive, serial ports, and parallel ports. As
of the early 2000s, many motherboards support a full range of audio, video, storage, and
networking functions without the need for any expansion cards at all; higher-end systems
for 3D gaming and computer graphics typically retain only the graphics card as a separate
component.
• PC/XT - created by IBM for the IBM PC, its first home computer. As the
specifications were open, a large number of clone motherboards were produced
and it became a de facto standard.
• AT form factor (Advanced Technology) - created by IBM for its PC/XT successor,
the AT. Also known as Full AT, it was popular during the era of the Intel 80386
microprocessor. Superseded by ATX.
• Baby-at - IBM's 1985 successor to the AT motherboard. Functionally equivalent
to the AT, it became popular due to its significantly smaller size.
• ATX - created by Intel in 1995. As of 2007, it is the most popular form factor for
commodity motherboards.
• ETX - used in embedded systems and single board computers.
• microATX - a smaller variant of the ATX form factor (about 25% shorter). It is
compatible with most ATX cases, but supports fewer expansion slots due to its
smaller size. Very popular for desktop and small form factor computers as of
2007.
• FlexATX - a subset of microATX developed by Intel in 1999. Allows more
flexible motherboard design, component positioning and shape.
• LPX - based on a design by Western Digital, it allowed smaller cases than the AT
standard, by putting the expansion card slots on a riser (image). LPX was never
standardized and generally only used by large OEMs.
• NLX - a low-profile design released in 1997. It also incorporated a riser for
expansion cards, and never became popular.
• BTX (Balanced Technology Extended) - a standard proposed by Intel as a
successor to ATX in the early 2000s.
• Mini-ITX - a small, highly-integrated form factor created by VIA in 2001. Mini-
ITX was designed for small devices such as thin clients and set-top boxes.
• WTX - created by Intel in 1998. A large design for servers and high-end
workstations featuring multiple CPUs and hard drives.
Laptop computers generally use highly integrated, miniaturized, and customized
motherboards. This is one of the reasons that laptop computers are difficult to upgrade
and expensive to repair. Often the failure of one laptop component requires the
replacement of the entire motherboard, which is usually more expensive than a desktop
motherboard due to the large number of integrated components.
This image compares the sizes of common form factors to ISO 216 paper sizes (e.g. A4):
[edit] Notes