Ok, The compatibility Part.
Ill explain only a few things as i dont have much time atm, Ill come back later for you.
When buying a Motherboard, theres a few things to consider, for example
What are you going to be doing with it,
Games
Movies
Work
School
Say you were going to use it for games,
Your obviously going to need a pretty high end PC to play the latest games,
So motherboard wise, you are going to be looking for things like
PCIE (which means You can get a card supportting the PCI-Express socket on your motherboard, The old type is AGP, Which in turn, is slower, less upgradeable options and correct me if im wrong, Cannot run in SLI Mode)
SLI (which means you can have 2 Graphics Cards)
At least 5.1 Channel audio built in (5 Speakers + a Subwoofer)
DDR/DDR2 Ram, you would never buy a Motherboard with Ram Like SDRam, Which is old/Outdated.
SATA/SATA2 (This is a type of harddrive, SATA2 Can transfer Data at 3GB/s, where as IDE is a considerably less something around 500MB/s? Correct me if im wrong on that)
The issue of Weather it will all work together comes down to knowing your motherboard, The first part of a computer you would buy would Definitly be the Motherboard, from there you can make sure all your Parts will be compatible, By following some simple things such as
If your motherboard said :
Supports AMD Athlon 64 X2 Socket 939
PCI-Express
Dual Channel DDR Ram
Gigabit Lan
8 Channel Audio
Sata2
Then you would know, That you HAVE to buy a Socket 939 CPU Chip (when you look at buying chips, they will say what socket they are)
Next, You would know you HAVE to buy a Pci-Express GPU (Graphics Card, Unless it has a Integrated Video (Onboard Video))
Next, You would Know you HAVE to get DDR Ram, the dual channel means you have have Ram basically working faster together than if you just had the two sticks of ram on a normal ram slot
Next, you would know you have a Gigabit Lan card Built on.
Next, You would know you have a 8 Channel Sound Card
And finally, you would know that Your motherboard Supports SATA2 Hard drives, IDE (standard) Harddrives will still work, But you can also purchase the Quicker SATA2 Harddrives.
If your motherboards Description says you can have a certain type of hardware, For example, the PCI-Express, then you automatically know that that type of Hardware is Supported.
I think i may of confused you, but when i get back, ill write some more Easy to understand Things for you.
Mitch
Ps, hehe that motherboard specs was stolen from my motherboards box xD hehe
