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.