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A motherboard (sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, planar board or logic board,or colloquially, a mob is the main printed circuit board (PCB) found in computers and other expandable systems. It holds many of the crucial electronic components of the system, such as the central processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for other peripherals. Unlike a backplane, a motherboard '''contains significant sub-systems''' such as ''the processor'' and other components.

[[File:Computer motherboard annotated 600.jpg|400px]]

A motherboard provides the '''electrical connections''' by which the other components of the system communicate (talk with each other). Unlike a backplane, it also contains the central processing unit and hosts other subsystems and devices.

[[File:640px-MicroATX Motherboard with AMD Athlon Processor 2 Digon3.jpg|400px]]

Modern motherboards include:

'''Sockets''' (or slots) in which one or more microprocessors may be installed. In the case of CPUs in BGA packages, such as the VIA C3, the CPU is directly soldered to the motherboard.
'''Slots''' into which the system's main memory is to be installed (typically in the form of DIMM modules containing DRAM chips)
'''A chipset''' which forms an interface between the CPU's front-side bus, main memory, and peripheral buses.
'''Non-volatile''' memory chips (usually Flash ROM in modern motherboards) containing the system's firmware or BIOS.
'''A clock generator''' which produces the system clock signal to synchronize the various components.
'''Slots for expansion cards''' (the interface to the system via the buses supported by the chipset).
'''Power connectors''', which receive electrical power from the computer power supply and distribute it to the CPU, chipset, main memory, and expansion cards. As of 2007, some [[Graphics cards]] (e.g. GeForce 8 and Radeon R600) require more power than the motherboard can provide, and thus dedicated connectors have been introduced to attach them directly to the power supply. Most disk drives also connect to the power supply via dedicated connectors.