Computer Motherboards

A computer motherboard is the piece of hardware which all the other hardware components connect to. It also handles the computer's initial boot-up sequence (known as the BIOS).

Motherboards are also commonly referred to as the main board (and on Apple systems, the logic board). They're also sometimes referred to as the mobo. There are different sizes of motherboards, the most common of which is the ATX motherboard which is 305 x 244 millimeters.

ATX was first introduced in 1995 and whilst there have been pushes to move away from ATX motherboards, it is still the most popular size.

A smaller standard also exists, known as micro ATX motherboards. These are 244 x 244 mm in size and they are intended to be used in smaller systems. A motherboard usually can house just one CPU (the 'brains' of a computer; its computational centre).

However it is possible to get dual processor motherboards, which are used mainly in higher end systems (such as servers) where a greater amount of processing power is required.

For further information on various types of motherboards (such as how to make your computer reliable for long with quality Asus motherboards and 2.9GHz AMD processors), check the list below for various articles in this section.

Articles about various types of motherboards: