Power Supply: The power supply connects to nearly every device in the PC to provide power. It’s located at the rear of the case. Drive Bays: The 5.25" and 3.5" drive bays house the many kinds of storage devices a computer might contain. Expansion Slots: The expansion slots at the rear of the case are specially cut out so the peripherals connected to the motherboard can extend from the case for easy connection to external devices such as printers, monitors, and other external devices.
Expansion Cards: Motherboards usually contain a number of slots for internal peripheral cards like video cards and sound cards to connect to. Back Panel Connectors: The back panel connectors extend out the back of the case for connection to external peripherals. CPU & Memory Sockets: The CPU and memory connect directly to the motherboard via the CPU socket connector and memory slots. Storage Drive Connectors: Storage devices are connected via cables to the motherboard. There are special connectors for floppy drives, optical drives, and hard drives.
SATA Cables: This example shows two hard disk drives that connect to the motherboard via SATA cables for fast hard drive access. Another kind of connection is the older PATA cable connection, but an example isn’t shown in this image. Power Connectors: Power from the power supply is delivered to both drives via cables that plug into the power port on the drives.
PCI Connector: This peripheral card was designed with a PCI connector and must be used in this type of slot on the motherboard.
Other types of peripheral cards include sound cards, wireless network cards, modems, and more. More and more functions typically found on peripheral cards, such as video and sound, are being integrated directly onto the motherboard to decrease costs.
USB Ports: Devices like mice, keyboards, digital cameras, scanners, and printers often connect to the motherboard via the USB ports. LAN Port: The LAN port is used to connect the PC to a local network or to high-speed internet services. VGA & HDMI Ports: On this motherboard, there’s an HDMI port and a VGA port to provide video out to those types of display devices. Another kind you might see is DVI. Audio Ports: Integrated line-out, microphone, and line-in ports provide access to integrated audio, meaning there’s no need for sound cards on this particular computer. PS/2 Ports: Older keyboards and mice that aren’t USB devices will connect to the computer via the PS/2 ports, which are not shown in this image above. Newer computers don’t typically come with PS/2 connections. Serial & Parallel Ports: Also not shown here are a serial port and parallel port to allow connections to printers and other external devices. Like mice and keyboards, these devices have basically been replaced by USB.
