What is this chip on the motherboard?

[daddrian]

I find this chip on all LGA 775 mobos. Some have a heatsink on it, some do not. I think that's the integrated GPU, but I'm not sure.

 

 

[LukeSavenije]

a south bridge

[daddrian]

1 minute ago, LukeSavenije said:

a south bridge

 And it does what?

[LukeSavenije]

Just now, Adrian98765 said:

 And it does what?

p45 here as an example, the lowest chip in the middle is a southbridge

[goto10]

that is the southbridge, these moterboards are from the time there was northbridge and southbridge chps

 

each one handles different things, like sata, pci express comunication, agp comunication, ram comunication, lots of stuff that come more recent cpus handle directly, so southbridge and chipset have changed purpose and location

 

some manufacturers decided that temperature was a concern and put a heatsink over them, others decided that a part working at 40°c is nothing and left them without a heatsink

 

usually those are the chipset, in a modern pc it is for example the x570 chipset, to give it a name, it handles most stuff on the motherboard basically, what the cpu doesn't handle now, since it does alot, now is used a heatsink and a fan over it, because it consumes more power and generates more heat

 

back in the lga 775 era, cases usually had very poor airflow, so a chipset without a heatsink usually always worked hot when moving files between hard disks, so some manufacturers decided to put the heatsink, to avoid getting complains about slow performance and high temperatures, others well, left them be without heatsink

 

each manufacturer does things different, sometimes depends on what intel used to promise in terms of power consumption and temperature

[Jurrunio]

southbridge is basically a connectivity hub, carrying SATA ports, extra PCIe slots (connection x4 or below) and other stuff not in the rear I/O section. Northbridge runs everything in the rear I/O. Today CPUs integrates northbridge's function, while southbridge is renamed to chipset