Certification Objective

• 701: 1.2 Explain motherboard components, types, and features

The motherboard is the real estate on which a PC is built; all PC components are directly or indirectly connected to this large printed circuit board. This chapter introduces all of the topics of the CompTIA A+ Essentials (2009 Edition) Exam objective 701: 1.2, including form factors, memory slots, processor sockets, bus architecture, bus slots, PATA, SATA, eSATA, chipsets, and BIOS/CMOS. In later chapters, we will revisit many topics with a different spin, as we look at installing, maintaining, upgrading, and troubleshooting PCs. For instance, we introduce the topic of RAID in this chapter, as it involves a BIOS setting, but we will further explore it in Chapter 2.