The ATX motherboard of all motherboards this is the system motherboard that is being used in all home and business computers today. Though the shape might be slightly different from each manufacture the basic design is the same. Can you guess who developed this beautiful device?
Intel Corporation. For those of you who are AMD fans we just have to bite the bullet and admit that Intel did a great job of developing this fine system board. So what are some of the features of the ATX board? for starters the lay out of the board is more conveniently accessible than the dinosaur the AT.
It includes a power on switch that can be software enabled, and has extra power connections for fans to keep the system cool, you AMD guys know what I'm talking about when comes to too much heat in your box. It also uses a much more friendly 20-pin power connector.
There is a mini ATX that looks like a full size standard ATX just much smaller, usually has allot less PCI slots and more than likely on board video and network connections. Which really isn't all that bad. However if you really desire speed and power go with the full size ATX system board. There are a minimum of five PCI slots and a AGP slot or a PCI express slot which is fairly new technology that is discuss on our PCI Slot page and a good amount of USB ports. Besides all the slots and USB ports most full size ATX mother boards can handle higher amounts of memory. The full size ATX motherboard is generally more expensive but they are worth the money that you have to pay to get them. One thing to be aware of is the many brands of ATX mother boards, they are definitely not equal, do lots of research and comparison before you make that final purchase, there is nothing worse than have a mother board fail and then not having a computer for a time until you get it replaced, especially when you are on my site. Notice the word replace? generally most motherboards can not be repaired once they have failed.
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