Motherboard Motherboards, like graphics cards, are built by the same group of manufacturers and for the most part attempt to distinguish themselves from the competition in the same ways. Unlike graphics cards, they are designed to work with specific families of APUs/CPUs. Further, there are families of bridging chips associated with each family of APUs that offer low, medium, or high numbers or quality of additional features such as PCI and PCIe slots, SATA connections, USB connections, audio chip, and interface speeds. Motherboards come in four basic sizes and a typical set of distinguishing features. The Next Unit of Computing (NUC) motherboard is around 4”x4” and has the least features. In fact you can’t even buy a NUC motherboard. One must buy a NUC that includes the motherboard, case, power supply, APU, graphics port, Ethernet port, audio, and a few USB ports. Add laptop memory, a solid state storage card, possibly a WiFi card and stir. Due to its size there is no expansion or upgrade capability to its core components. The mini ITX is about 6.5”x6.5” and adds a graphics slot, two memory slots, and four SATA controller ports for storage devices. Some come with built-in WiFi. As long as additional card slots are not required, this board can be used for most workstation purposes from office applications to high end gaming and graphic design. However, due to its size which causes denser packing of components, it is more expensive than a micro ATX. The micro ATX is approximately 9.5”x9.5”. It has one graphics slot, two or four memory slots, and one or two additional slots for specialty cards. It is the cheapest type of motherboard for two reasons. First it is not as densely populated as the mini ITX so there are no design challenges requiring costly solutions. Second, it provides an adequate amount but not an overabundance of features. And finally there are the ATX and Extended ATX at roughly 12”x9.5” and 12”x10.5” respectively. Like the micro ATX they are not densely populated but provide maximum flexibility by having an overabundance of additional features such as eight to ten SATA ports for storage, two to four graphics slots, and three or four additional slots for specialty cards. They may also have two Ethernet ports, eight to ten USB ports, and perhaps a fire wire port.