Motherboard manufacturers include Acer, ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte Technology, Intel and Micro-Star International.

How do motherboards work?

The PCB of a large motherboard may include six to 14 layers of fiberglass, copper connecting traces and copper planes for power and signal isolation. These include processor sockets; dual in-line memory modules; Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI), PCI Express (PCIe) and solid-state drive M.2 slots; as well as power supply connections.

A heatsink and fan manage the heat components such as the CPU generate. Typically motherboards offer additional connectivity through a Southbridge chip such as PCI, Serial Advanced Technology Attachment or SATA, Thunderbolt, USB and other interfaces.

The CPU is generally connected to double data rate 3 (DDR3), DDR4, DDR5 or onboard LPDDRx RAM and PCIe. This is done through point-to-point interconnects such as HyperTransport, Intel’s QuickPath Interconnect and Ultra Path Interconnect. Choosing a motherboard often determines many features a computer will support. So,. Moreover,. Additionally,.

Other form factor designers include the following:

• extended ATX
• mini-ATX
• micro ATX
• BTX
• micro BTX
• mini-ITX
• micro ITX
• nano-ITX