Motherboard

A motherboard, also known as a mainboard, system board, logic board, and informally mobo (see § Nomenclature), is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expandable systems. It holds and allows communication between many of the crucial electronic components of a system, such as the central processing unit (CPU) and memory, and provides connectors for other peripherals.

Unlike a backplane, a motherboard usually contains significant sub-systems, such as the CPU, the chipset's input/output and memory controllers, interface connectors, and other components integrated for general use.