The Best Motherboards for 2009

Motherboard Parts & Primary Areas 

• PCI Slot: PCI or Peripheral Component Interconnect slots are pictured on the right in the above image. PCI computer bus slots can hold PCI-compatible cards. There are many products that encompass PCI, such as cable modem cards, graphics cards, video capture device cards, sound cards, SCSI adapters and more. Generally, graphics cards are more favorable in AGP format, as the PCI format is an older technology.
• AGP Slot: Standing for "Accelerated Graphics Port," this newer slot out-muscles PCI in terms of graphics card usage. It's main competency is that it aids performance by helping to accelerate 3D motion graphics. Note that AGP has recently been deemed obsolete, thanks to the newer PCI-Express bus format.
• Connectors for Integrated Peripherals: Plain and simple, these are the input areas for your speaker and/or audio visual component jacks, mouse and keyboard plugs and USB ports. While you can plug your monitor in here, it makes much more sense to get some kind of modern graphics card for those purposes (since the card will also have a monitor connection).
• CPU Socket: This is the housing for your very sensitive, very expensive processor chip. It has a metal arm bar that must be raised before you place the chip (carefully) into the pin pattern, and then push down the metal arm to fasten the chip in place.
• CPU Fan & Heatsink Mounts: A heatsink will be needed to cool your chip while your PC is running, as the chip itself generates a great amount of heat which must not only be disbursed (which is what the heatsink's metallic fins do), but a fan will need to be concentrated on the chip itself. These are the places where you fasten the heatsink fan.
• Memory Slot: As you may have guessed, your RAM card(s) go here. You'll want to double-check with your motherboard's manual for the correct type of RAM that it is compatible with - or you'll be sorry to see a PC that simply does not boot up at all!
• Power Connector: Nothing works without electricity, of course - you'll need to fasten a power source to the inside of your case, and hook it up to the motherboard. All additional parts, including your hard drive(s), CD or DVD drives, heatsink fan, other interior fans, and possibly your graphics card will also need their own power connectors. Don't worry - the power source always supplies you with more than enough plugs.
• What else?: You'll also need other parts, including cables made specifically for your CD and DVD drives and hard drives. In the old days, these cables were extremely wide and as flat as a credit card, and VERY bulky. Thankfully, a stroke of common sense has resulted in the flat cable - a space-saving alternative.