Modern computer system specifications
With the information in this chapter, you should be able to interpret most of the technical features of a modern computer motherboard, processor, and chipset. This section provides an example of the specifications for a current (2021) motherboard with some explanation of the individual features.
The designers of a computer motherboard must make several decisions such as the number of PCIe expansion ports, number of DIMM slots, number of USB ports, and the number of SATA ports to be provided in a particular motherboard model. These decisions are guided by the target customer demographic, whether it be gamers, business users, or cost-conscious home users.
The example motherboard presented here is the ASUS Prime X570-Pro, a higher-performance board intended for gaming applications that supports gaming-related features such as overclocking. Overclocking refers to increasing the clock frequencies for the processor and other system components...