system board components - chipset

 CHIPSET - each hardware component in your computer system has circuitry responsible for managing a specific hardware part. this circuitry is the controller for that specific piece of hardware. for example, access to memory is controlled by the memory controller the hard disk is managed by the hard disk controller and the keyboard is managed by the keyboard controller.

the combination of computer chips that hold the logic for these controllers is the motherboard chipset. together the computer chips make up the chipset control communication from the CPU to each of the hardware devices in the system.

two chips that make up a big part of a motherboard chipset are the Northbridge and the southbridge.

# The NORTH BRIDGE chip is responsible for communication from the CPU to the memory of the CPU to the PCI ( peripheral component interconnect ) express bus and the accelerated graphics port (AGP ) device. 

# The SOUTH BRIDGE -  chip is responsible for communication between the CPU and other devices such as PCI, ISA, and IDE device. these two chips contain the bulk of the logic that allows a CPU to communicate with other hardware.

Locating the northbridge and southbridge chips on a motherboard can sometimes be challenging. the north bridge chip is typically the second-largest chip ( after the processor ) and also typically contains a heat sink or a fan on top of the chip to keep it cool. the north bridge chip is typically located between the processor and the AGP slot and the south bridge is normally located farther from the processor usually beside the PCI slots.