If you look closely at your motherboard, you'll see a number of different components for CPU and memory. But you'll also see a relatively large connector, and that's used for the main power for your motherboard. This is the connector that provides 3.3 volt, 5V, and 12vt DC power to your motherboard and the components connected to your motherboard. If you're working with an older motherboard, this may be a 20 pin connector, but newer motherboards use 24 pins to provide the power that it needs. If you have a motherboard with 20 pins, but you have a connector with 24 pins, you can often simply use that same 24 pin connector, even though four pins may be missing from the connector that's on your motherboard. Some of the cables from your power supply may even be modular, so you can pull off four of those connectors and simply use the 20 that are left. Here's the 24 pin connector on the motherboard. You'll notice that the individual pins on the connector have different shapes. This keying ensures that you can only plug the main power connector in one single way to that connection. And if you were to look at the connector coming from the power supply, you will see that it has the same type of keying mechanism on the connector. To plug this into the motherboard, you simply line up those keys in the proper order and push the connector all the way into the motherboard. Normally, this connector will have a lip or locking mechanism so that when you connect this to the motherboard, it can only be removed if you unlock it with the latch. Normally that connector to the motherboard provides all the power we need. But often you may install an adapter card that requires additional power than what the motherboard is already providing. This is very common if you're plugging in a graphics card or some other device that needs additional power over what the motherboard can provide. This is a PCI Express 8pin and six pin connector. The six pin version of this provides 75 watts and the 8 pin provides 150 watts of 12volt DC power. We often associate this with video adapter cards, but any other kind of adapter that needs that additional power may have connectors on it for that PCI Express connector. Some of these PCI Express connectors, like this one, can be an eightpin connector, but you can also pull off two of the pins on the side so that you can use it as a six pin connector for those types of devices. For example, if you're installing a video card in a motherboard, you may notice on the top of the video card are additional power connectors. This adapter card has a power connector with six additional links, which means that we'll want to use the six additional pins that are available from the power supply to give additional power to this video card. If you've ever connected a storage device to your motherboard, you may be familiar with the SATA drive interfaces. These interfaces are used to provide data connectivity to these SATA drives. The connectors themselves have this L-shape associated with them and this provides only the data connection. Some other boards may have an ESATA connector or an external SATA connection or it may be integrated into an adapter card. This is an ESATA expansion card that plugs into the bus of the computer and provides two additional ESATA connectors on the outside of the computer. Here's the view of those interfaces installed onto the back of a desktop computer. Another connector type you would find on a motherboard is one that has a number of pins that are sticking up from the motherboard itself. We refer to these as headers or pin headers. This is a relatively simple electrical interface that's commonly used to connect a number of different devices to your motherboard. For example, you may be plugging in speakers or you may be connecting power buttons or USB interfaces that are on your computer case. Here's an example of some pin headers that are available on a motherboard. These pin headers appear to support ATPM or trusted platform module. There is some version one or version two USB connections and there are also USB 3.0 connections also all as pin headers on this motherboard. Sometimes these pin headers are associated with a single pair of wires. You can see these front panel connectors that are used for a reset switch or a hard drive light. You would connect those to the pin headers that are on a motherboard and usually they're marked on the motherboard itself. For example, you might plug into a pin header for power buttons, reset buttons, and other LED lights. This makes it very easy to connect different buttons, interfaces, and lights that may be on your computer case to their appropriate connection on your motherboard. Another popular storage connection on your motherboard is one that is relatively small. You have to look very closely to be able to find the M.2 connector that might be on your motherboard. You can see the M.2 connectors are on this motherboard and they're relatively small, especially when you compare them to the flash drive that you might be connecting to that interface. These M.2 interfaces are relatively modular. If you have a flash drive like this one, you simply need to look for the M.2 connection on your motherboard and push it directly into that particular slot. And then to complete the installation, you simply fasten down the flash drive. And now you've connected an M.2 drive to that interface on your motherboard.