What are sockets, slots, and chipsets?
A Socket is the term loosely used to describe the place on the mainboard (motherboard) of a computer system where the CPU (Central Processing Unit) is placed. In all modern motherboards sockets are ZIF (They require Zero Insertion Force to install the CPU). Recently Intel has begun to switch from a system where the CPU has the pins on it to LGA (land grid array) where the pins are located on the motherboard. This is an advantage because pins are sometimes damaged beyond repair, and a motherboard is generally cheaper than a CPU.
A Slot the same thing as a socket, except the CPU is located on a daughter card which is then plugged in (slotted) onto the motherboard. Intel used this in Slot 1 and Slot 2, and AMD with the short lived Slot A. No mainstream processors currently use this format. A Slocket or Slotket is a device used to mount a socket based processor on a motherboard with a slot. This was rather common with Intel's Slot 1, Slot 1 motherboards were generally cheaper than Socket 370.
A Chipset is the heart of the motherboard, it determines things such as what CPUs the motherboard supports, what RAM, what video cards, and what peripherals you can attach and upgrade your system with. If the CPU is the brain of the computer (arguably the CPU and Video Card) then the Chipset is the spinal cord, it allows communication with the rest of the system. Traditionally chipsets have a Northbridge (memory, CPU, and video card interface) and a Southbridge (PCI bus, USB, SATA, ATA-IDE) However, recently AMD has moved the memory controller to the CPU for more performance, and thus only a single chip is needed.
Kevin C. June 8th 2006 kcas88@gmail.com
『We're not lost. We're locationally challenged.』 - John M. Ford
