Motherboards

The motherboard is heart of the computer, with all of it's connections leading out from itself and into every device in the machine. A variety of books that where looked at for reference have all agreed on one fact about the motherboard, and that is the fact that it is the main printed circuit board inside the machine in question, when you open a PC that much is obvious as the Motherboard will more than likely cover the whole of one side of the PC. According to Shelley O'Hara (Author of The Complete Idiots Guide to Buying and Upgrading PC's) the motherboard is 'a big, flat circuit board that covers the entire floor of the PC casing.'

The Motherboard is a very important part of the system since everything has to be connected to it, everything therefore has to be compatible with it. Also the speed of the connections that run from each component to the motherboard can have a positive or negative effect on the system in question. Ian Sinclair (Author of Build and Upgrade Your Own PC) says ' The motherboard design fixes the maximum speed of CPU that you can use.' I will explain what this means in the section dedicated to the CPU.

CPU

At times the CPU is referred to as the 'brain' of the computer and this is not without justification. CPU stands for Central Processing Unit and it is argued amongst many people weather or not this is the most important part of the computer, therefore the one you should dedicate the lions share of your budget to. Regardless of whether or not it is the most important part of the PC it is still one of the most significant pieces of hardware inside the case. According to Joe Kraynak (Author of Using and Upgrading PC's)...