Winn L. Rosch Hardware Bible, Sixth Edition

Riser Boards

A riser board looks like an expansion board and works like an expansion board. Using the quack-standard—if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck—a riser board is an expansion board. But really it's not, at least according to the people who have created the standards that make it possible to consider riser boards as being expansion boards. In its various riser board standards, Intel claims that its riser boards are not an expansion board standard.

Rest assured you're not the only one confused by riser boards. The concept underlying them is the same as an expansion board—put extra circuitry on a special card so that it can be easily removed and changed. The boards look like expansion boards, pegged at the same height and using ...