The motherboard is the foundation of ever y PC but how well do you know this complicated component? Darien Graham-Smith explores all its main features

1 CHIPSET

The chipset is a collection of controller chips that manage the flow of data bet ween the CPU and other components. It might be hidden under a heatsink, as in the image opposite, but it’s present on ever y board. Different chipsets suppor t different processors: Intel’s 13th generation Core processors can only be used in a board that uses one of the company’s 600-series or 700-series chipsets, while AMD’s Ryzen 7000-series CPUs need an AMD B650 or X670 chipset.

The chipset doesn’t just determine what CPU you can use. It also dictates other technical features of the motherboard, such as whether it works with DDR4 memor y or requires more expensive DDR5 modules, and how many PCI-Express lanes and USB connectors it has. You don’t have to research the technical details of the chipset before buying a PC, though—you can just check the features of the board itself.

2 CPU socket

Intel’s 12th and 13th-generation desktop processors use the LGA1700 socket format. The letters stand for ‘land grid array’, meaning the socket contains 1,700 tiny pins, which press against a grid of flat contact points on the base of the processor. Installing the CPU in a socket like this is a simple case of dropping the chip into the housing and locking it in place with a latch.

For AMD’s Ryzen 7000-series processors, the socket AM5 connector is an almost identical LGA design, with 1,718 pins. Older Ryzen CPUs use PGA (pin grid array) sockets, where the motherboard mount has thousands of tiny holes and the pins stick out of the underside of the chip. The two designs are electronically identical but PGA is more fiddly and it’s easier to bend or break the pins.

3 RAM slots

Some motherboards use DDR4 RAM, while others require the newer, faster, and more expensive DDR5 modules. These technologies aren’t cross-compatible, and a little plastic key that sticks up near the center of the slot ensures that you can’t accidentally plug in a module of the wrong type.

You’ll often see memor y slots in colored pairs. This is for dual-channel configurations: if you put two identical DIMMs into matching slots, the motherboard can boost per formance by accessing them in parallel. Dual-channel memor y is optional, however—you can put any DIMM of any size into any slot. You can also mix modules with different speed ratings, although they will all uniformly operate at whatever frequency is set in the BIOS.