I WOULD LIKE thorough basic info

[bruin1970]

hi all. first time here.

i am very new and uninformed about the innards of a computer. this does me little good seeing as how i want to build one. i've merely picked up things while browsing for parts..

is there a site that give extremely thorough info on all aspects of the computer innards? I AM PARTICULARLY IN NEED OF INFO ABOUT THE MOTHER BOARD!!!!!!!

this seems where a lot of congestion lies, and i'd like to clear it all up in my head. what is northbridge, southbridge, ich5, what is "canterwood" and all those other names. i'd like to be familiar with all these things before i take a single step.

so i'm ready! can anyone direct me to THE place with all the info i need or want? thanks

 

[Scout]

I donno if I could give you one place to look... really you need to spend some time reading about motherboards and motherboard reviews. In each review they discuss about the features of each board.

Tom's Hardware, AnandTech, and ArsTechnica sites all have lots of good articles on motherboards.

Scout
700 Mflops in SETI!

 

[Crashman]

How about a brief discription:
1.) Chipset is the interface between the CPU and everything else.
2.) The northbridge connects directly to the CPU bus and usually controlls RAM access, AGP, and the southbridge.
3.) The southbrige is the controll center for other devices, such as the hard drive controller, PCI bus, and USB controller.
4.) Canterwood is the code name for the 875P chipset. Springdale is the code name for the 865PE chipset. The both use the same core.
5.) ICH5 is the name of Intel's latest southbridge. There is also a more "full featured" version called the ICH5R, the R stands for RAID as it has a Serial ATA RAID controller built in.

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