Motherboard

MOTHERBOARD

A motherboard is an electronic circuit board in a computer which interconnects hardware devices attached to it. At a minimum it includes one or more Central processing units, and the main processing activity of the computer takes place on it. However, other connected printed circuit boards may contain their own pre-processing or post-processing CPUs, to take some of the load off of the motherboard; these, together with other plug-in boards without CPUs, may be called "daughter boards." It was called a "mother" board in relation to these. A PC motherboard may have a series of sockets, allowing daughter boards to be plugged in directly. Other connectors on the motherboard allow communication through cables with various peripheral devices, both inside and outside the computer case.

Graphic cards- are also called video card's or a video adapter. They are in all PCs. Graphic cards convert signals into video signals so the images can be displayed on the monitor. While many graphics cards are built into the motherboard these days, enthusiasts will invest in standalone graphics cards with stronger and more powerful processing capabilities. This allows for heavy image editing, or better rendering and framerates in computer games.

Graphics cards are designed to offload rendering from the CPU. Graphics cards are powered by the motherboard and require a PCIX or PCIX 2.0 slot to install. Some cards require more power and thus will need a 6-8 pin connector that runs directly to the power supply. Graphics cards also include on board memory for efficient rendering.



A sound card, also referred to as an audio card facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under the control of computer programs. Sound cards for computers were uncommon until 1988, which left the single internal PC speaker as the only way early PC software could produce sound and music.

Uses of a sound card include the audio component's for multimedia applications such as games, video/audio editing software and music composition. Most computers today have sound capabilities built into the motherboard, while others require additional expansion cards.

Network Interface Cards can be a network card, network adapter, LAN Adapter or NIC (network interface card). They are a piece of computer hardware designed to allow computers to communicate over a computer network. Used for remote communication via cable. Data is transmitted over a cable network. The NIC connects computers and other devices such as printers. Many modern motherboards have NICs built in by default.