MOTHERBOARD BASIC LABELING & DESCRIPTION

Heat Sink - A heat sink is an electronic device that incorporates either a fan or a peltier
device to keep a hot component such as a processor cool. There are two heat sink types:
active and passive.

Active heat sinks utilize power and are usually a fan type or some other peltier
cooling device.
Passive heat sinks are 100% reliable, as they have no mechanical components.
Passive heat sinks are made of an aluminum-finned radiator that dissipates heat
through convection.
AGP - Accelerated Graphics Port, AGP is an advanced port designed for Video cards and 3D
accelerators.
PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect),
A 12V power supply cable like that shown in the picture to the left that is used
with motherboards that have an Intel Pentium 4 processor. The P4 cable has two
black wires that serve as a ground and two yellow wires that are +12VDC.
NORTHBRIDGE - Northbridge is an integrated circuit that is responsible for communications
between the CPU interface, AGP, and the memory. Unlike the Southbridge the Northbridge is

directly connected to these components and acts like a "bridge" for the Southbridge chip to
communicate with the CPU, RAM, and graphics controller.
SOUTHBRIDGE - The Southbridge is an integrated circuit on the motherboard that is
responsible for the hard drive controller, I/O controller and integrated hardware such as sound
card, video card if present on the motherboard, USB, PCI, ISA, IDE, BIOS, and Ethernet.