The Importance of Chipsets: A Guide to Choosing the Right Motherboard

When it comes to building or upgrading your computer, one of the most critical components is the motherboard. The motherboard is the main circuit board that connects all the hardware components together and provides a platform for them to function. However, with so many motherboards available in the market, choosing the right one can be overwhelming, especially for those who are new to building PCs.

In this article, we will discuss the importance of chipsets and how they affect your motherboard choice. We will also provide some insights into AMD and Intel's chipset offerings and their features, as well as offer tips on how to choose the right chipset for your needs.

AMD Chipset Overview

For those who are familiar with AMD processors, it's likely that you're aware of the company's various chipset offerings. The X3 and X4 70 chipsets are considered to be among the most expensive and feature-packed options available in the market. These chipsets offer advanced features such as crossfire and SLI compatibility, onboard audio systems, and additional storage drive support. Additionally, they provide more PCIe lanes, which means that you can connect more drives and other components to your motherboard without having to cut into existing lanes.

On the other hand, cheaper motherboards may have some of these features stripped away in order to save costs. While this may seem like a bad thing at first, it's actually a common practice in the industry. The idea is that if you're not planning on using certain features, then there's no need to pay for them. However, this also means that you'll have to compromise on the level of performance and compatibility that your motherboard can offer.

Intel Chipset Overview

In contrast to AMD, Intel's chipset offerings are a bit more complex. While Intel does offer some chipsets that support overclocking, such as the Z series, others may not be compatible with certain CPUs. This is because Intel has historically taken a more conservative approach to CPU compatibility, and some chipsets may only support specific processors.

For example, the Z170 chipset supports the 6th gen Skylake CPUs, while the Z270 and Z370 chipsets support the 7th gen Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake CPUs. The Z390 and Z390 Z series chipsets support the 9th gen Comet Lake CPUs. However, it's worth noting that some of these chipsets may not be compatible with certain features or technologies, such as Intel's Optane storage.

When choosing an Intel chipset, it's essential to ensure that it supports your specific CPU. This can get confusing, especially if you're new to building PCs. To make things easier, Intel offers a chipset catalog on their website, which lists the compatible chipsets for each processor.

Tips for Choosing the Right Chipset

So, how do you choose the right chipset for your needs? Here are some tips to keep in mind:

* Consider your budget: Cheaper motherboards may have stripped features, but they can still offer good performance and compatibility.

* Think about your usage: If you're a gamer or content creator, you'll want a motherboard with advanced features like crossfire and SLI compatibility.

* Check for compatibility: Make sure that the chipset supports your specific CPU and any other hardware components you plan to use.

* Research: Read reviews and do some research to find out about the strengths and weaknesses of different chipsets.

Conclusion

Choosing the right chipset can be overwhelming, especially if you're new to building PCs. However, by understanding the differences between AMD and Intel's chipset offerings and considering your budget, usage, and compatibility needs, you can make an informed decision that meets your requirements. Remember to research and read reviews to find out more about each chipset before making a final decision. With the right motherboard, you'll be well on your way to building or upgrading a powerful PC that meets your needs.

Additional Resources

For those who want to learn more about motherboards and chipsets, we have some additional resources available:

* PC Part Picker: This website offers a comprehensive guide to choosing the right motherboard for your needs. It also allows you to input your CPU choice and provides recommendations based on customer feedback.

* Intel Chipset Catalog: If you're looking for specific chipset information, this is the place to start. Intel's website offers a detailed list of compatible chipsets for each processor.

* Science City Playlist: Our in-depth analysis playlist covers topics like motherboard compatibility, RAM upgrades, and more.

Stay tuned for more articles and guides on building PCs, upgrading components, and everything in between!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enI want to preface this one with a disclaimer I don't expect to cover absolutely everything pertaining to chipsets in this video and that's why I titled it the way that I did I do expect however to provide a detailed description of what a chipset is to an extent and why it matters in a system as well as what kinds to look for in various builds beginners especially pay close attention here this video is brought to you by privacy comm in a nutshell privacy comm allows you to purchase things online using virtual debit card numbers instead of real ones this is useful especially if you plan on ordering some sites with questionable security standards and it's still peace of mind for the popular online retailers like Amazon and Newegg privacy comm boasts the same security standards as your bank and split key encryption ensures a no single person can access your data by the way you can download the browser extension and have it autofill the info for any of your virtual cards like this it's super simple secure and best of all 100% free since they make money on the merchant side like that of credit card companies you have to try via the link below or by visiting privacy comm slash science studio for a free $5 credit toward your first purchase so let's start off by defining a chip set and in this most basic form a chip set with respect to personal computers is a controller for discrete and onboard hardware you see in the good old days right simple chip sets were scattered all across a motherboard you had one for controlling your graphics card one for controlling sound and that's why they were so many to begin with anything you'd want to connect to your motherboard would require a discrete chip the layouts took up too much space pipelines weren't streamlined and latency was actually pretty high if the chipsets themselves were clocked relatively low by the way even today various companies produced chipsets including nvidia AMD and intel and it makes sense really for a majority of these manufacturers to handle things in house since chipsets need to be tuned specifically for the hardware that they'll be linking to and controlling but things eventually merged on the IC level into Northbridge and Southbridge where the Northbridge connected via the frontside bus and consisted of icy sensitive to low latency tasks such as the communication between a CPU and system RAM for example or a graphics card now the Southbridge which was located much further down on the board instead controlled SATA ports networking audio and others you know basically less sensitive aspects of a personal computer things that weren't as time-sensitive and we saw motherboards with North bridges all the way up to the AMD FX lineup whose am-3 and am3+ chipsets maintained to both North and South counterparts today however nearly all of what a North Bridge typically handles is controlled via the CPU which would normally go up here North Bridge would be somewhere in this space so memory controllers for example are now totally CPU integrated and started back with the AMD 64 and Intel Nehalem processors in fact Sandy Bridge was one of the first CP families to fully integrate the controllers of a typical North Bridge which eliminated the need for one altogether and also managed to pack the memory controller IGP and several processor cores all into a die that's not much larger actually in the case of Sandy Bridge a little smaller than the service area of a quarter so you can see the trend here technology's goal is to minimize real estate and maximize efficiency and today we've completely absorbed large chunks of controllers and integrated most if not all of them into the CPU we're talking about the CPU die specifically and that's why I use the quarter analogy because what you're looking at typically when you see a CPU is the IHS or that large piece of metal over the die itself so what about the South Bridge well it's evolved just a little bit and it's named different things depending on who you ask which is really annoying so intel calls there's the IC H or the PCH it stands for i/o or platform controller hub and AMD refers to theirs as the F CH or a fusion controller hub you'll almost never hear these terms in PC tech though because nobody really cares to separate them they do very similar things so most enthusiasts just refer to them as chipsets or South bridges will call them chipsets for the remainder of this video just so you don't have to hear me keep saying PCH and F CH so to recap the South Bridge handles things like USB controllers the audio interface the internet connection it still does quite a bit but these processes again aren't typically as time-sensitive it communicates with the CPU via the direct media interface or the unified media interface again very annoying that's for Intel and AMD respectively which were the same methods used by the south and north bridges in the past by the way speeds here are still pretty quick somewhere in the realm of like a Giga transfers per second per lane which comes out to roughly four gigabytes per second when four lanes are in use this eliminates any potential bottleneck for lower to your controllers like SATA which currently cap out at around six gigabits per second remember divided by eight if you want to go from bits to bytes bit confusing I don't blame you for getting this mixed up and often overlooked aspect by the way of PCH or fch I should just be calling them chips that's it's annoying is the control over a few PCIe lanes so most of these slots on your motherboard communicate directly with either your CPU or your chipset in the case of the CPU is an ultra-low latent data tunnel between the discreet Hardware and your CPU this is the beauty of peripheral component interconnect Express that's PCIe just wanted to sound smart there but the chips that handles a few lanes as well and again it depends on the type of chipset that you have so you could in theory connect PCIe storage drives like nvme drives in this fashion your motherboard manual will typically denote which slot is controlled by the chipset or which ones can be controlled by it so you just have to remember that you know if you add more devices to it like hard drives SATA drives basically any SATA Drive SSDs or even USB drives to your system you'll be occupying some of these chipset lanes by default so you won't have some money to use or to offload on to the PCIe lanes now on to the hardware compatibility because you understand the basics with respect to communication between the chipset and the CPU it makes sense to assume that not all chipsets can coexist with certain CPUs right for one you've got the AMD Intel division obviously suck it's aside I mean you can't run an intel cpu with an AMD motherboard or vice versa because we're talking about an AMD chipset so the protocols and instructions send to and from the chipset in question are essentially in different orders and different languages per se so even if you could power a modern intel chip with say an AM for board which would be really weird and extremely cool you couldn't you know let's assume you could also like retrace pin outs and so that Ram compatibility with solid your storage straps for one would have no way to communicate with your CPU your BIOS wouldn't either so you probably couldn't get the system to boot it would just power on so yeah as such here are your modern consumer grid AMD chipsets we're gonna go and roll under those what I have right here is a thief or 50 motherboard meaning that there is a be 450 chips that packed underneath this should we call it a heatsink I think that's doing it more justice than deserves it's like a it's basically a metal plate it looks looks very nice so you've got a 320 and be 350 B 450 X 370 and X 470 I'm ignoring enthusiast grade hardware like the Red River in this video I don't advise beginners to begin their careers in PC tech with X 3 9 9 or x2 9 n systems most people won't even utilize that many cores to begin with by the way I may miss a few derivatives here and there but these are the ones that you're more likely to see on sites like Newegg and Amazon all of these chipsets are compatible with all of these CPUs assuming you flash a compatible bios more on that in this video right here x3 and x4 70 chipsets are the most expensive and feature-packed by comparison so you'll often see added compatibility for crossfire and SLI for example a more advanced onboard audio system and additional storage drive support you'll also typically see additional PCIe lanes meaning you connect more drives and other things to your motherboard without having to cut into other lanes that other hardware might already be using in short the cheaper the board is the more of these features you'll have stripped from you in an effort to save costs on both ends of the transaction that kind of makes sense and for reference B and X series chipsets in the case of AMD support overclocking I've got a few solid boards linked down below in the video description that I first an experience with if you are interested next up is Intel you've got a CH 310 B 250 B 360 H - 7 th 370z 370 z 270 and z 390 yeah Intel's a slightly different story and to be honest compatibility isn't even guaranteed all the way through this lineup so you can't just go out and buy a 9 9 CPU and make it run on a z170 board people have done in the past it requires modding BIOS tweaking but it's not advised and to be honest the power load from a CPU like that probably couldn't be handled by the MOSFETs VRMs on a z1 because those chips were a lot less intense when it came to power draw so when you throw something that power-hungry into it those can get extremely hot run out of spec and then you have even more substantial issues further down the line so I recommend with Intel sticking to boards that line up directly with each other boards that were released at the same time as their cpu counterparts and this is gonna require a bit of digging I could list them all out for you but I have instead linked one of Intel's chipset catalogs down below in the video description so it can give you an idea of what chipsets can be used with which CPUs and unlike AMD only Z series chipsets boast unlocked multipliers or allow for unlock multipliers so make sure you buy one of these if you intend to purchase a case series CPU again it can get confusing but a site like PC part picker and really help they're not a sponsored by any means I just feel like giving you all the help that you can get and PC part pickers a great site it'll even tell you if it detects incompatibility and it suggests motherboards based on your cpu choice and customer feedback it will let you know if your motherboard fits in a certain case it's a very helpful website so again if you haven't heard a PC port picker you're really missing out click that link below and yeah you'll thank me later so in closing I hope you've at least learn a thing or two about what chipsets are and why they are so important you know in the least maybe you just had a quick refresher and I appreciate you watching this part of the video pay special attention to the chipsets when selecting your next motherboard especially you guys beginners and purchase based on what you need in the immediate future so when people ask me you know which board should I get I can't answer for you unless you give me total context need to know if you care about crossfire and SLI if you care about 7.1 audio if you care about having two rj45 boards to care about having HDMI and DisplayPort outlets built into the motherboard there are so many variables at play and frankly the chipset is just one of those things so if we could actually make an entire series out of talking about all the different motherboard features but chipsets are a big aspect of you know choosing a motherboard so I want you guys to I have at least a little bit of context into why they're important and why you should consider them when deciding to build your next PC best of luck to those who are watching this video have absolutely no idea what they're gonna do what they're gonna build maybe this is your first build ever I have plenty of videos on the channel that can help you out build guides all that stuff and if you just want to know about why things work the way they do we have an entire playlist dedicated to yeah stuff like that in-depth analyses and then if you want more simplified stuff you can check out our minute science playlist you guys like this video thumbs up thumbs down for the outs of feeling you know what to do click that red subscribe button if you haven't already and I'll catch you in the next video this is science city I think this will be our last video for 2018 so that's pretty cool happy 2019 everyone I'll see you next year alright let's do this little ovals this is science studio thanks for learning with us looking good old fashioned out over thereI want to preface this one with a disclaimer I don't expect to cover absolutely everything pertaining to chipsets in this video and that's why I titled it the way that I did I do expect however to provide a detailed description of what a chipset is to an extent and why it matters in a system as well as what kinds to look for in various builds beginners especially pay close attention here this video is brought to you by privacy comm in a nutshell privacy comm allows you to purchase things online using virtual debit card numbers instead of real ones this is useful especially if you plan on ordering some sites with questionable security standards and it's still peace of mind for the popular online retailers like Amazon and Newegg privacy comm boasts the same security standards as your bank and split key encryption ensures a no single person can access your data by the way you can download the browser extension and have it autofill the info for any of your virtual cards like this it's super simple secure and best of all 100% free since they make money on the merchant side like that of credit card companies you have to try via the link below or by visiting privacy comm slash science studio for a free $5 credit toward your first purchase so let's start off by defining a chip set and in this most basic form a chip set with respect to personal computers is a controller for discrete and onboard hardware you see in the good old days right simple chip sets were scattered all across a motherboard you had one for controlling your graphics card one for controlling sound and that's why they were so many to begin with anything you'd want to connect to your motherboard would require a discrete chip the layouts took up too much space pipelines weren't streamlined and latency was actually pretty high if the chipsets themselves were clocked relatively low by the way even today various companies produced chipsets including nvidia AMD and intel and it makes sense really for a majority of these manufacturers to handle things in house since chipsets need to be tuned specifically for the hardware that they'll be linking to and controlling but things eventually merged on the IC level into Northbridge and Southbridge where the Northbridge connected via the frontside bus and consisted of icy sensitive to low latency tasks such as the communication between a CPU and system RAM for example or a graphics card now the Southbridge which was located much further down on the board instead controlled SATA ports networking audio and others you know basically less sensitive aspects of a personal computer things that weren't as time-sensitive and we saw motherboards with North bridges all the way up to the AMD FX lineup whose am-3 and am3+ chipsets maintained to both North and South counterparts today however nearly all of what a North Bridge typically handles is controlled via the CPU which would normally go up here North Bridge would be somewhere in this space so memory controllers for example are now totally CPU integrated and started back with the AMD 64 and Intel Nehalem processors in fact Sandy Bridge was one of the first CP families to fully integrate the controllers of a typical North Bridge which eliminated the need for one altogether and also managed to pack the memory controller IGP and several processor cores all into a die that's not much larger actually in the case of Sandy Bridge a little smaller than the service area of a quarter so you can see the trend here technology's goal is to minimize real estate and maximize efficiency and today we've completely absorbed large chunks of controllers and integrated most if not all of them into the CPU we're talking about the CPU die specifically and that's why I use the quarter analogy because what you're looking at typically when you see a CPU is the IHS or that large piece of metal over the die itself so what about the South Bridge well it's evolved just a little bit and it's named different things depending on who you ask which is really annoying so intel calls there's the IC H or the PCH it stands for i/o or platform controller hub and AMD refers to theirs as the F CH or a fusion controller hub you'll almost never hear these terms in PC tech though because nobody really cares to separate them they do very similar things so most enthusiasts just refer to them as chipsets or South bridges will call them chipsets for the remainder of this video just so you don't have to hear me keep saying PCH and F CH so to recap the South Bridge handles things like USB controllers the audio interface the internet connection it still does quite a bit but these processes again aren't typically as time-sensitive it communicates with the CPU via the direct media interface or the unified media interface again very annoying that's for Intel and AMD respectively which were the same methods used by the south and north bridges in the past by the way speeds here are still pretty quick somewhere in the realm of like a Giga transfers per second per lane which comes out to roughly four gigabytes per second when four lanes are in use this eliminates any potential bottleneck for lower to your controllers like SATA which currently cap out at around six gigabits per second remember divided by eight if you want to go from bits to bytes bit confusing I don't blame you for getting this mixed up and often overlooked aspect by the way of PCH or fch I should just be calling them chips that's it's annoying is the control over a few PCIe lanes so most of these slots on your motherboard communicate directly with either your CPU or your chipset in the case of the CPU is an ultra-low latent data tunnel between the discreet Hardware and your CPU this is the beauty of peripheral component interconnect Express that's PCIe just wanted to sound smart there but the chips that handles a few lanes as well and again it depends on the type of chipset that you have so you could in theory connect PCIe storage drives like nvme drives in this fashion your motherboard manual will typically denote which slot is controlled by the chipset or which ones can be controlled by it so you just have to remember that you know if you add more devices to it like hard drives SATA drives basically any SATA Drive SSDs or even USB drives to your system you'll be occupying some of these chipset lanes by default so you won't have some money to use or to offload on to the PCIe lanes now on to the hardware compatibility because you understand the basics with respect to communication between the chipset and the CPU it makes sense to assume that not all chipsets can coexist with certain CPUs right for one you've got the AMD Intel division obviously suck it's aside I mean you can't run an intel cpu with an AMD motherboard or vice versa because we're talking about an AMD chipset so the protocols and instructions send to and from the chipset in question are essentially in different orders and different languages per se so even if you could power a modern intel chip with say an AM for board which would be really weird and extremely cool you couldn't you know let's assume you could also like retrace pin outs and so that Ram compatibility with solid your storage straps for one would have no way to communicate with your CPU your BIOS wouldn't either so you probably couldn't get the system to boot it would just power on so yeah as such here are your modern consumer grid AMD chipsets we're gonna go and roll under those what I have right here is a thief or 50 motherboard meaning that there is a be 450 chips that packed underneath this should we call it a heatsink I think that's doing it more justice than deserves it's like a it's basically a metal plate it looks looks very nice so you've got a 320 and be 350 B 450 X 370 and X 470 I'm ignoring enthusiast grade hardware like the Red River in this video I don't advise beginners to begin their careers in PC tech with X 3 9 9 or x2 9 n systems most people won't even utilize that many cores to begin with by the way I may miss a few derivatives here and there but these are the ones that you're more likely to see on sites like Newegg and Amazon all of these chipsets are compatible with all of these CPUs assuming you flash a compatible bios more on that in this video right here x3 and x4 70 chipsets are the most expensive and feature-packed by comparison so you'll often see added compatibility for crossfire and SLI for example a more advanced onboard audio system and additional storage drive support you'll also typically see additional PCIe lanes meaning you connect more drives and other things to your motherboard without having to cut into other lanes that other hardware might already be using in short the cheaper the board is the more of these features you'll have stripped from you in an effort to save costs on both ends of the transaction that kind of makes sense and for reference B and X series chipsets in the case of AMD support overclocking I've got a few solid boards linked down below in the video description that I first an experience with if you are interested next up is Intel you've got a CH 310 B 250 B 360 H - 7 th 370z 370 z 270 and z 390 yeah Intel's a slightly different story and to be honest compatibility isn't even guaranteed all the way through this lineup so you can't just go out and buy a 9 9 CPU and make it run on a z170 board people have done in the past it requires modding BIOS tweaking but it's not advised and to be honest the power load from a CPU like that probably couldn't be handled by the MOSFETs VRMs on a z1 because those chips were a lot less intense when it came to power draw so when you throw something that power-hungry into it those can get extremely hot run out of spec and then you have even more substantial issues further down the line so I recommend with Intel sticking to boards that line up directly with each other boards that were released at the same time as their cpu counterparts and this is gonna require a bit of digging I could list them all out for you but I have instead linked one of Intel's chipset catalogs down below in the video description so it can give you an idea of what chipsets can be used with which CPUs and unlike AMD only Z series chipsets boast unlocked multipliers or allow for unlock multipliers so make sure you buy one of these if you intend to purchase a case series CPU again it can get confusing but a site like PC part picker and really help they're not a sponsored by any means I just feel like giving you all the help that you can get and PC part pickers a great site it'll even tell you if it detects incompatibility and it suggests motherboards based on your cpu choice and customer feedback it will let you know if your motherboard fits in a certain case it's a very helpful website so again if you haven't heard a PC port picker you're really missing out click that link below and yeah you'll thank me later so in closing I hope you've at least learn a thing or two about what chipsets are and why they are so important you know in the least maybe you just had a quick refresher and I appreciate you watching this part of the video pay special attention to the chipsets when selecting your next motherboard especially you guys beginners and purchase based on what you need in the immediate future so when people ask me you know which board should I get I can't answer for you unless you give me total context need to know if you care about crossfire and SLI if you care about 7.1 audio if you care about having two rj45 boards to care about having HDMI and DisplayPort outlets built into the motherboard there are so many variables at play and frankly the chipset is just one of those things so if we could actually make an entire series out of talking about all the different motherboard features but chipsets are a big aspect of you know choosing a motherboard so I want you guys to I have at least a little bit of context into why they're important and why you should consider them when deciding to build your next PC best of luck to those who are watching this video have absolutely no idea what they're gonna do what they're gonna build maybe this is your first build ever I have plenty of videos on the channel that can help you out build guides all that stuff and if you just want to know about why things work the way they do we have an entire playlist dedicated to yeah stuff like that in-depth analyses and then if you want more simplified stuff you can check out our minute science playlist you guys like this video thumbs up thumbs down for the outs of feeling you know what to do click that red subscribe button if you haven't already and I'll catch you in the next video this is science city I think this will be our last video for 2018 so that's pretty cool happy 2019 everyone I'll see you next year alright let's do this little ovals this is science studio thanks for learning with us looking good old fashioned out over there\n"