Date First Published: 1st July 2022
Topic: Computer Systems
Subtopic: Computer Hardware
Article Type: Computer Terms & Definitions
Difficulty: MediumDifficulty Level: 4/10
Learn more about what the motherboard is in this article.
The motherboard, also known as the main circuit board or backplane board, is the large circuit board in a computer that all peripherals and necessary components connect to. Inside a computer case, the biggest part that can be found is the motherboard. The main role of the motherboard is to enable everything in a computer to work together, making it useable. Without the motherboard, components of a computer, such as the hard drive, CPU, or GPU, would be unable to interact with each other.
The motherboard is securely attached by small screws through predrilled holes inside the computer case. At the front of the motherboard, ports can be found that all the internal components connect to. Small wires from the front of the computer connect to the motherboard to enable the LED lights to work at the front. These LED lights switch on when the computer starts and flash when it is in sleep mode or when the hard disk drive is being accessed.
Other ports are present on the motherboard that allow the hard drive, floppy drive, and optical drive to connect through SATA cables.
Since every type of motherboard is designed to work with certain types of processors and memory, one motherboard does not work with every type of processor and memory.
Motherboards come in three different sizes, which include:
Components of the motherboard include:
Popular motherboard manufacturers include:
All mobile devices contain some form of circuit board. However, the board is known as a logic board rather than a motherboard. In order to save space, components, such as the CPU and RAM are soldered onto the board and contain no expansion slots for adding extra components to the device.
Logic boards on mobile devices are much more difficult to replace if they become damaged. If the logic board becomes damaged, the entire device will have to be replaced as a device would not work without a circuit board.
Laptops contain motherboards as they are types of personal computers. However, the motherboards are mostly designed specifically for the laptop they are being used in. Motherboards of desktop computers are usually less specifically designed as they will need to work with different computers and components. Desktop motherboards have more space and are designed for users to add as many extra components as they want to them. Laptop motherboards make it much harder for users to add or replace individual components as a lot of the components are soldered into the motherboard.
It is called a motherboard because the word comes from 'daughterboard'. Daughterboards are small circuit boards that directly plug into the motherboard to provide additional functionality, such as a modem. The smaller board can be thought of as the child of the main board, which is where the word ‘motherboard’ comes from. There is no such thing as a fatherboard or a brotherboard.
Before microprocessors were invented, computers contained multiple printed circuit boards in a card-cage case with components connected by a backplane. Copper wires were the individual connections between card connector pins. Printed circuit boards quickly became the standard practice.
The CPU, memory, and peripherals were located on separately printed circuit boards, which were plugged into the backplane. An example of this type of backplane system is the S-100 bus. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, it became reasonable to move the increasing number of peripheral functions onto the motherboard. In the 1980s, computer motherboards started to include single ICs that could support a range of low-speed peripherals, such as PS/2 keyboards and mouses, floppy disk drives, serial ports, and parallel ports.
In 1981, the first motherboard was used in the IBM Personal Computer. It was originally called a ‘planar’ instead of a motherboard. By the late 1990s, most personal computer motherboards included embedded audio, video, storage, and networking functionality without the requirement for any expansion cards.
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