Chipset

A critical component of the motherboard is the chipset. When technicians talk about the chipset, they are usually referring to one or more chips designed to work hand in glove with the CPU. One part of this chipset, referred to as the North bride, controls communications between the CPU and other critical motherboard components. These are the system RAM and the PCI, AGP, and PCIe busses. Another portion, the south bridge, manages communications between the CPU and such I/O busses are USB,IDE, PS2, SATA, and others