The motherboard is the heart of your computer and consists the CPU, BIOS, memory, mass storage interfaces, serial and parallel ports, usb ports, expansion slots, and all the controllers required to control standard peripheral devices, such as the display screen, keyboard, and disk drive. All these components are the organs of your computer and together on a circuit are called motherboard. A motherboard may have on board component. On board components are modules already integrated to the main circuitry on the motherboard. Your motherboard might have on board AGP card, Network card, Modem, & Sound Card.

There are a number of motherboard classifications or form factors. Four classifications that you would find in market today are; Baby AT, ATX, LXP, and NLX . NLX is just upgrade of LXP. The other thing to consider when buying motherboard is the socket type it has and maybe the manufacturer if you trust one manufacturer than another. Read the document of your mother to make sure it supports type of CPU processor you will install. For example; Intel® Socket 478 motherboard might only support Intel Pentium 4 processors. If you are not sure, buy motherboard with pre-installed processor.

Today you can buy a motherboard with all ports to run a complete system pre-installed. If not, your motherboard should atleast have 2 Serial Ports for serial mouse and serial modem, parallel ports for parallel port printer, keyboard port for for keyboard connection, mouse port for mouse connection, and usb ports.