What is a motherboard?

A motherboard is the largest circuit board on your computer. All circuit boards are made of a
silicone material and are generally green in color (some companies use other colors such as red
or blue). A motherboard is different from any other circuit board on your computer however,
because it is the main communication highway that connects the other components of a computer
allowing them to communicate. The motherboard usually contains two different chips to allow
this communication, the northbridge and the southbridge. The northbridge is used to connect the
Central Processing Unit (CPU) to the higher speed devices such as Random Access Memory
(RAM) and Graphics Processing Units (GPU). The southbridge is used to connect the CPU to
lower speed devices such as the Peripheral Component Interconnect or PCI but more specifically
Audio and your internet connection or Ethernet connection. It is also important to note that the
combination of the northbrige and southbridge are classified as a chipset. Motherboards also
have the housing for the CPU which processes all computing requests like a traffic cop directs
the traffic. Most motherboards also contain housing connections for the GPU which is what
actually displays the data translated by the processor. In some of the more compact versions of
computers, such as laptops, motherboards can also contain the GPU and CPU as integrated items
just like the northbridge and southbridge. The motherboard is the backbone of a computer, it
provides structure to the rest of the components.