How does a motherboard itself work to make a computer BE a computer?
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Motherboard connects everything together.
Allows cpy, the main processing unit talk to Ram the work memory and the Gpu that makes the pretty pictures. Also holds all the other controllers for other ports, be it audio and usb. Alao does some power management.
On a technical level you dont have to have a motherboard, just connect everything together with cables, but a mobo makes everything pretty and neat
it’s like this…
you have a business and you have different departments all working on designs, policies, pricing, marketing, graphics, accounting, HR, reception, etc…
they could all work from home, but that’s kind of inefficient if it was only limited to landlines.
Instead, they have an office that each department has their own space and system of commuinations with methods of interactions.
so, the office in this scenario is like the motherboard, it connects all the pieces together to allow communications and interacts.
Basically, if the processor is the brain of your computer and the graphics card is the visual cortex, the main board is the central nervous system keeping everything connected.
First, the motherboard provides clean, stable power to the various components, and gets that power to where it needs to be. Modern motherboards actually check the supplied power and turn off if the power is not to specification.
Second, the motherboard provides a clock signal that synchronizes operations.
Third, the motherboard provides a BIOS – this is some Read-Only Memory that provides the low level startup code that executes when the CPU is powered on. The BIOS runs a Power On Self Test (POST), identifies attached hardware, and then looks for bootable disks to load an available operating system.
Fourth, the motherboard provides some memory management hardware that handles RAM and Cache memory that is not on the CPU.
Fifth, the motherboard has data connections for hardware such as USB, SATA, and PCI. This includes access control to the data bus, synchronization of data transfer, and device to device data transfer.
This is how it was explained to me: the computer is a body, while the motherboard is a brain. Every process the body (computer) needs to perform is controlled by the brain (motherboard). If the brain dies or stops working, so does the body.
If you imagine that each component in the computer—CPU, memory, storage, GPU, networking, audio etc is a building in a city with a specific function, then the motherboard is the city infrastructure itself: the streets, electrical, plumbing and so on, that allow the buildings to communicate, share data, and operate in concert.
And it’s worth noting that many functions such as audio and networking are handled by the motherboard itself—depending on the board, they may have chips built-in for various functions. In fact, some boards _include_ the CPU and memory, we usually call these System-on-Chip, or SoC—smart phones are one example.
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