Motherboard

In electronics and in particular computer hardware, a motherboard (sometimes alternatively known as the mainboard, system board, planar boardor logic board,^[1] or colloquially, a mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) found in computers and other expandable systems. It holds many of the crucial electronic components of the system, such as the central processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for other peripherals. Unlike a backplane, a motherboard contains significant sub-systems such as the CPU.

Motherboard specifically refers to a PCB with expansion capability - the board is the "mother" of all components attached to it, which often includesound cards, video cards, network cards, hard drives or other forms of persistent storage, TV tuner cards, cards providing extra USB or Firewire slots, and a variety of other custom components. (The term mainboard is applied to devices with a single board and no additional expansions or capability - in modern terms this would include controlling boards in televisions, washing machines and other embedded systems, which are not true motherboards.)