The motherboard is a large board
A simple overview to start with... Let us begin with the main role of a motherboard. In essence, it serves two purposes: Provide electrical power to the individual components Provide a route to allow the components to communicate with each other There are other things a motherboard does (e.g. holds the components in place, or provides feedback as to how well everything is functioning) but the aforementioned aspects are critical to how a PC operates, that almost every other part that makes up the motherboard, is related to these two things. Nearly every motherboard used in a standard desktop PC today will have sockets for the central processing unit (CPU), memory modules (nearly always a type of DRAM), add-in expansion cards (such a graphics card), storage , input/ouputs , and a means to communicate with other computers and systems. Standard motherboards initially differ in terms of their size, and there are ...