PC Basics - Motherboard

Motherboard by John Anthony

Motherboards are offered in two basic sizes, ATX (12" wide with varying depths) and ATX mini (8.5" wide, usually with a depth that makes it almost square).
It is powered from the power supply by means of a 20 pin connector.
Motherboards with microprocessors on board sell from $160 for an ATX mini with 566Mhz Celeron, up to $850 for an ATX with a 2.0Ghz Pentium 4 installed. There are many options to choose from such as the number and type of expansions slots, the chip set and so on that affect the performance and price.
Keep in mind that the performance of a PC is not determined solely by the Mhz rating of the microprocessor. The chip set, type of graphics board, speed of the memory bus, amount of memory, access speed of the HDD all affect PC performance.
The motherboard is described in more detail in 'Hardware'.