
Your computer architecture acquaintance all starts here: the motherboard...backbone to your arrangement - and the active force for all of that abundant being you're about to backpack into it. See which ones accord the best blast for your buck!
Topics Discussed-
* About Motherboards (For the beginners!)
* Motherboard Locations & Primary Areas
* The Elite Motherboard: Still A Clear Winner for 2010!
* Featured Tutorial: Installing an ASUS Rampage Formula Motherboard
* Top 5 Current Best Intel Motherboards
* Top 5 Current Best AMD Motherboards
About Motherboards (For the beginners!)
If you're a PC-building novice, you'll apparently wish to analysis the bald essentials of what absolutely a motherboard is all about. In short, the motherboard is a ample ambit lath that gets attached anon on to the close aback of your PC case, and functions as the agency to which all of your computers centralized locations (processor chip, ability source, ability cables, RAM) hotlink up and synergize.

Motherboard Parts
Motherboard Locations & Primary Areas
Your motherboard has several notable slots, plugs and added absorbing things. Take a quick attending through all of the capital areas of the motherboard that you'll accept to apperceive about, afore you adventure further! Moving clockwise while searching at the picture:
* PCI Slot: PCI or Peripheral Basic Interconnect slots are pictured on the appropriate in the aloft image. PCI computer bus slots can authority PCI-compatible cards. There are abounding articles that beset PCI, such as cable modem cards, cartoon cards, video abduction accessory cards, complete cards, SCSI adapters and more. Generally, cartoon cards are added favorable in AGP format, as the PCI architecture is an earlier technology.
* AGP Slot: Standing for "Accelerated Cartoon Port," this newer aperture out-muscles PCI in agreement of cartoon agenda usage. It's capital adequacy is that it aids achievement by allowance to advance 3D motion graphics. Note that AGP has afresh been accounted obsolete, acknowledgment to the newer PCI-Express bus format.
* Connectors for Integrated Peripherals: Plain and simple, these are the ascribe areas for your apostle and/or audio beheld basic jacks, abrasion and keyboard plugs and USB ports. While you can bung your adviser in here, it makes abundant added faculty to get some affectionate of avant-garde cartoon agenda for those purposes (since the agenda will aswell accept a adviser connection).
* CPU Socket: This is the apartment for your actual sensitive, actual big-ticket processor chip. It has a metal arm bar that accept to be aloft afore you abode the dent (carefully) into the pin pattern, and again advance down the metal arm to adhere the dent in place.
* CPU Fan & Heatsink Mounts: A heatsink will be bare to air-conditioned your dent while your PC is running, as the dent itself generates a abundant bulk of calefaction which accept to not alone be disbursed (which is what the heatsink's brownish fins do), but a fan will charge to be concentrated on the dent itself. These are the places area you adhere the heatsink fan.
* Anamnesis Slot: As you may accept guessed, your RAM card(s) go here. You'll wish to double-check with your motherboard's chiral for the actual blazon of RAM that it is accordant with - or you'll be apologetic to see a PC that artlessly does not cossack up at all!
* Ability Connector: Nothing works after electricity, of advance - you'll charge to adhere a ability antecedent to the central of your case, and angle it up to themotherboard . All added parts, including your harder drive(s), CD or DVD drives, heatsink fan, added autogenous fans, and possibly your cartoon agenda will aswell charge their own ability connectors. Don't anguish - the ability antecedent consistently food you with added than abundant plugs.
* What else?: You'll aswell charge added parts, including cables fabricated accurately for your CD and DVD drives and harder drives. In the old days, these cables were acutely advanced and as collapsed as a acclaim card, and VERY bulky. Thankfully, a achievement of accepted faculty has resulted in the collapsed cable - a space-saving alternative.
The Elite Motherboard: Still A Clear Winner for 2010!
The ASUS Rampage Formula 775 ATX Intel Motherboard
Looking to body your next dream apparatus - after "budget PC" limitations? You ca
n't lose with ASUS's abundantly absorbing Rampage Formula ATX lath for Intel chips. Newegg barter gave it a 5-egg appraisement -- and it's no surprise, with this acutely overclock-able board's amazing capabilities...and, it's beneath $150!
Couple it with the dent it was built-in to hold: the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz LGA 775, max out your RAM with two sets of 2x2GB Corsair Dominator 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM/1066 anamnesis (for 8 batty Gigs of RAM total), and you've got one monster of a apparatus at a amount that will agitated any Dell XPS customer!
Top 5 Current Best Intel Motherboards
#1) ABIT IP35 Pro LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Intel Motherboard
- CPU Type: Quad-core / Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Duo / Pentium
- Dual Channel Supported: Yes
- FSB: 1333/1066MHz
- Maximum Anamnesis Supported: 8GB
- Anamnesis Standard: DDR2 800
- Number of Anamnesis Slots: 4×240pin
- PCI Express x1: 1
- PCI Express x16: 1 x PCI-E X16, 1 x PCI-E X16 (x4 bandwidth)
- Model #: IP35 Pro
- Item #: N82E16813127030
#2) Intel BOXD975XBX2KR LGA 775 Intel 975X ATX Intel Motherboard
- CPU Type: Quad-core / Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Duo / Pentium
- Dual Channel Supported: Yes
- FSB: 1066/800MHz
- Maximum Anamnesis Supported: 8GB
- Anamnesis Standard: DDR2 800
- Number of Anamnesis Slots: 4%uFFFD240pin
- PCI Express x16: 3 (1 electrical x16 or x8, 1 electrical x8, 1 electrical x4)
- PCI Slots: 2
- Model #: BOXD975XBX2KR
- Item #: N82E16813121059
Intel BOXD975XBX2KR ATX Intel Motherboard
#3) XFX MB-N780-ISH9 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI Intel Motherboard
- CPU Type: Quad-core / Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Duo / Pentium
- Dual Channel Supported: Yes
- FSB: 1333/1066MHz
- Maximum Anamnesis Supported: 8GB
- Anamnesis Standard: DDR2 800 (up to DDR2 1200 with EPP 1.0)
- Number of Anamnesis Slots: 4×240pin
- PCI Express 2.0 x16: 2
- PCI Express x1: 1
- Model #: MB-N780-ISH9
- Item #: N82E16813141005
XFX MB-N780-ISH9 Intel Motherboard
#4) GIGABYTE GA-G31M-S2L LGA 775 Intel G31 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
- CPU Type: Quad-core / Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Duo / Pentium
- Dual Channel Supported: Yes
- FSB: 1333/1066MHz
- Maximum Anamnesis Supported: 4GB
- Anamnesis Standard: DDR2 800
- Number of Anamnesis Slots: 2%uFFFD240pin
- PCI Express x1: 1
- PCI Express x16: 1
- Model #: GA-G31M-S2L
GIGABYTE GA-G31M-S2L Micro ATX Intel Motherboard
#5) GIGABYTE GA-EP35C-DS3R LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX Dynamic Energy Saver Ultra Durable II Intel Motherboard
- CPU Type: Quad-core / Core 2 Extreme / Core 2 Duo / Pentium
- FSB: 1600 (O.C.)/1333/1066MHz
- South Bridge: Intel ICH9R
- Number of Anamnesis Slots: 6%uFFFD240pin
- Anamnesis Standard: DDR3 1333 / DDR2 1066
- Maximum Anamnesis Supported: DDR3 up to 4 GB DDR2 up to 8 GB
- Dual Channel Supported: Yes
- PCI Express x16: 1
- Model #: GA-EP35C-DS3R
Top 5 Current Best AMD Motherboards#1) DFI LANPARTY DK 790FX-M2RS AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard
- CPU Type: Phenom / Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64
- Dual Channel Supported: Yes
- FSB: 2600MHz Hyper Transport (5200 MT/s)
- Maximum Anamnesis Supported: 8GB
- Anamnesis Standard: DDR2 800
- Number of Anamnesis Slots: 4%uFFFD240pin
- PATA: 1 x ATA100 2 Dev. Max
- PCI Express 2.0 x16: 3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots - 2-way or 4-way CrossFire at x16/x16/NC bandwidth - 3-way CrossFire at x16/x16/x4 bandwidth - 2-way CrossFire + Physics at x16/x16 bandwidth
# Model #: 790FX-M2RS
#2) MSI K9NGM4-F V.2 AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 7025 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
- CPU Type: Phenom / Athlon 64 X2 / Sempron
- Dual Channel Supported: Yes
- FSB: 1000MHz Hyper Transport (2000 MT/s)
- Maximum Anamnesis Supported: 4GB
- Anamnesis Standard: DDR2 800
- Number of Anamnesis Slots: 2%uFFFD240pin
- PATA: 1 x ATA100 2 Dev. Max
- PCI Express x1: 1
- Model #: K9NGM4-F V.2
#3) ASUS M3A-H/HDMI AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard - CPU Type: Phenom FX / Phenom / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 X2
- FSB: 2600MHz Hyper Transport (5200 MT/s)
- South Bridge: AMD SB700
- Number of Anamnesis Slots: 4%uFFFD240pin
- Anamnesis Standard: DDR2 1066
- Maximum Anamnesis Supported: 8GB
- Dual Channel Supported: Yes
- PCI Express 2.0 x16: 1
- Model #: M3A-H/HDMI
- Item #: N82E16813131289
#4) ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard - CPU Type: Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64
- Dual Channel Supported: Yes
- FSB: 1000MHz Hyper Transport (2000 MT/s)
- Maximum Anamnesis Supported: 8GB
- Anamnesis Standard: DDR2 800
- Number of Anamnesis Slots: 4%uFFFD240pin
- PATA: 1 x ATA100 2 Dev. Max
- PCI Express x1: 2
- Model #: M2N-SLI Deluxe
#5) ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard - CPU Type: Athlon 64 X2 / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64
- FSB: 1000MHz Hyper Transport (2000 MT/s)
- Number of Anamnesis Slots: 4%uFFFD240pin
- Anamnesis Standard: DDR2 800
- Maximum Anamnesis Supported: 8GB
- Dual Channel Supported: Yes
- PCI Express x16: 2
- PCI Express x4: 1
- Model #: M2N32-SLI DLX WIFI