Motherboard Chipsets - CompTIA A+ 220-801: 1.2

Motherboards/ System boards

• Everything begins or ends on the motherboard
• Sometimes called the mobo
• Standard Sizes
• Constant change
• Chipsets
• Bus speeds
• Cooling methods

Motherboard chipset diagram

 Northbridge (memory controller hub) 

• Connects the CPU to memory and high-speed graphics card
• Modern computers include cooling options
• Heatsink
• Fans

 Southbridge

• Manages connections
• PCI interface slots
• USB, Ethernet, IDE, ect
• Onboard graphics controllers
• BIOS

The chipset evolution

• Nothing stays the same
• It's all about speed

• More functions are moving into the CPU
• Bigger, faster, stronger

•  Intel Sandy Bridge processors
• Processor cores
• Memory controller
• Graphics processing unit (GPU)