Motherboard

A motherboard is the main circuit board in a computer and contains all of the electrical and data buses for the system. The motherboard also has sockets that are designed for the installation of the CPU, RAM modules, and PCI cards.  Additionally, a motherboard is equipped with connectors for hard drives, floppy drives and optical (CD and DVD) drives as well as connections for any other device or peripheral that will attach to the computer. A motherboard is also referred to as a system board or a "mobo". See the terms CPU, PCI, and RAM in this glossary for more information.