Windows is up. The board support page has a dozen downloads on it. Intel says the one everybody names first is not a driver at all
On an Intel board, the download labelled "chipset" is not a driver. Intel says so in its own support article, in one sentence: "The Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility is not a driver and does not include drivers." It installs INF files, which tell Windows what the pieces of the chipset are called. Nothing stops working if you skip it; Device Manager just shows generic names and warning marks. The downloads that do change what the machine can do are the network ones, and those come first because Windows Update — which Microsoft says handles most of the rest on its own, within about a day — cannot run without a connection.
The machine posts, Windows installs, and you end up on your board's support page looking at a download list. Somewhere in a forum thread is the instruction that got you there: install the chipset drivers first.
The phrase is doing two jobs at once, and they are not the same job.
Lumping the two together is what produces the advice to install everything on the page in order. The rest of this guide takes them apart, because the honest answer for the first is close to "do not bother" and the honest answer for the second is "yes, and start with the network".
This is not a matter of opinion or a pedantic distinction. Intel publishes a support article on the utility and spends its opening lines heading off the misunderstanding by name: "The Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility (also known as Intel® Chipset Device Software) is often called the chipset driver or chipset drivers, a common misconception."
And then, flatly: "The Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility is not a driver and does not include drivers."
So when a thread tells you your system is unstable because you have not installed the chipset drivers, the thing it is telling you to install contains, by the vendor's own description, no drivers. Whatever is wrong with the machine, this download is not the component that was missing.
Intel goes further and says when you would want it at all: "Unless you are installing an operating system, you don't need to install the Intel® Chipset Software Installation Utility." That sentence is the shortest answer to the title of this page that anyone has published, and it comes from the company that writes the software.
It does not mean the package is useless, and it does not mean you should go and remove it. It means it belongs in a different category from the LAN or audio download sitting next to it — installing it adds no capability, and skipping it removes none. Treat it as tidy-up rather than as a prerequisite, and stop reaching for it as the fix when something is genuinely broken.
If it is not a driver, what is in it? Intel answers that too, and the answer is plain enough to quote whole: "An INF is a text file that gives the operating system information about a piece of hardware on the system."
A text file. Not a runtime component, not something loaded into the kernel, not a piece of code that sits between Windows and the silicon. What it supplies is naming and identification, which Intel spells out in two more sentences:
That second one is the case where the package earns its place. A chipset that shipped after your copy of Windows was built is one Windows has never heard of, so it falls back to generic descriptions — "PCI standard host CPU bridge" and similar — or to a warning mark. Intel describes the fix for that in its own words on the chipset software landing page: the utility is "Useful in making sure that all Windows* INF files are installed for OS identification to reduce Yellow Bangs in Device Manager".
Intel is also specific about what you get if you install it late, after Windows is already running: "If you install the Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility after an operating system installation, only the INF files needed to recognize the product names in Device Manager will be installed." Product names in Device Manager. That is the deliverable.
One practical note from the same article, for anyone who already has it installed and is wondering whether to chase updates: "The Intel® Chipset Software Installation Utility automatically tells you if you need to update your chipset INF files and prompts you to install the files." You do not have to audit it by hand.
The second half of the question is what happens if you install nothing. Microsoft documents this, and the mechanism is worth knowing because it explains why a brand new install looks half-finished for a while and then quietly fixes itself.
Microsoft's driver-distribution documentation describes what happens when a device is connected to a Windows system. First, "Plug and Play (PnP) looks for a compatible driver already available on the computer." From there it branches:
Two things follow from that pair. A device that works straight away may still be running an in-box driver that Windows intends to replace, and the replacement can be the better part of a day away. A device that does not work at all triggers a search immediately rather than waiting for the daily scan.
The word Automatic in those sentences is a category, not a description. Microsoft splits submitted drivers into Automatic and Manual, and says of the first: "Automatic is the default setting for all new shipping labels", and "All Automatic drivers must first be evaluated by Microsoft through Driver Flighting." Manual drivers are the ones Windows will not fetch on its own: "Starting in Windows 10, version 2004, Windows Update distributes only Automatic drivers for a system's devices. When Manual drivers are available for devices on the computer, the Windows Update page in the Settings app displays View optional updates."
Microsoft's consumer-facing page says the same thing in shorter words: "Windows 11 uses Windows Update to install recommended drivers automatically and lets you manually install optional driver updates when they're available", and "Optional drivers aren't installed automatically."
Windows will get most of it, but not instantly, and not all of it. The gap is the drivers a vendor published as Manual, which sit behind View optional updates until someone goes and looks, plus anything the vendor never submitted to Windows Update at all. Microsoft names the fallback for that case directly: "If Windows Update can't find drivers or updated drivers for a device, check the hardware manufacturer's website for the latest driver that's compatible with your version of Windows."
Note the timing in the "up to 24 hours" sentence: Microsoft is describing the moment a device is connected. On a fresh build, everything on the board is new to that Windows installation at the same time, so this is the window a first boot sits inside. If you look at Device Manager ten minutes after the install finishes and dislike what you see, that is a reasonable point at which to wait rather than to start downloading.
The downloads live on your board's own support page, not on Intel's. Intel says so itself on the chipset software page, and it is worth quoting because it applies to every board on this site: "If you purchased a pre-built system or third-party motherboard, contact your manufacturer for the latest updates and technical support information." Every board we review is a third-party motherboard. Intel is telling our entire readership to go to ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE or ASRock rather than to Intel.
To do that you need the exact board model, including the variant suffix, because the WiFi and non-WiFi editions of one model number have different network hardware and therefore different downloads. Our guide on finding out which motherboard you have covers how to read it off a running Windows install.
On an ASUS board, the downloads sit behind the Driver & Tools tab on your board's own support page — that is the label the page prints today, read from a live board page on 15 September 2026. Be aware that ASUS's own BIOS support article still calls that tab "Driver & Utility", which is a name the site no longer uses; go by what is on the screen. Once you are in, ASUS's storage-driver article names one of the categories you will find, telling readers to "visit the support page of your device model and download the Intel Rapid Storage Technology (IRST) driver from the Chipset category."
This ordering is our reasoning rather than a vendor instruction, and it rests on one fact from the section above: the mechanism Microsoft describes for filling in the rest of your drivers is Windows Update, and Windows Update is a download. A machine with no working network adapter cannot reach it.
Anything else on the page — RGB control software, monitoring suites, bundled utilities — is an application rather than a driver, and none of it is required for the hardware to work.
Driver & Tools is read from a live ASUS board support page, and the "Chipset" category is quoted from ASUS's own support article. MSI, GIGABYTE and ASRock lay their support pages out differently and label the sections in their own words. We could not source those labels from those vendors, so we have not guessed at them — on a non-ASUS board, find the download list for your exact model and read the categories it actually prints. The reasoning about which download to install first does not depend on what any of them are called.
This one has a short answer and a useful correction attached to it.
A BIOS update replaces firmware on a chip on the board. It is not an operating-system operation, and on ASUS boards it does not even involve the operating system: ASUS describes its in-firmware flashing tool as a way to "update the BIOS version without entering the Windows operating system." Nothing in that process reaches into a Windows installation to remove software from it.
Intel's line from earlier scopes the chipset package the same way: "Unless you are installing an operating system, you don't need to install the Intel® Chipset Software Installation Utility." Flashing firmware is not installing an operating system. We could not find a statement from Intel, Microsoft or a board vendor telling anyone to reinstall chipset software after a BIOS update, and we are not going to invent one.
The correction is that something real does get wiped, and it is not your drivers. ASUS is explicit about it: "After updating the BIOS, it is recommended to follow the steps below to restore the BIOS default settings, to avoid system unstable caused by incorrect BIOS setting." Your firmware settings are what you go back and redo — the memory profile, the boot order, the fan curves. Our BIOS update guide covers exactly what resets, and it is a longer list than most people expect.
So: if the machine behaves oddly after a flash, look at the firmware settings that just went back to default, not at the driver list in Device Manager.
Everything above argues for doing less. Here is the case where a driver genuinely is the problem, and how to tell.
The signal is in Device Manager, and Intel gives it the name its own documentation uses: the Yellow Bangs that the chipset INF files exist to reduce. A device carrying a warning mark is a device Windows could not identify or could not drive. A device sitting there with a correct-looking name and no mark is one Windows is already handling, whatever the support page still has on offer for it.
That distinction is the whole diagnostic. Do not install a driver because a list told you to; install one because a specific device is marked, or because a specific thing does not work.
If you do go looking through Device Manager, Microsoft documents a change in behaviour that catches people out. "Starting in Windows 10 version 2004, Windows only searches the local computer" when you select Update driver — so the option that used to reach out to Windows Update now does not. Microsoft describes the route that still does: "Starting in Windows 10, version 2004, select Search for updated drivers on Windows Update and then select View optional updates->Driver updates to download Manual drivers."
And if that comes back with nothing, you are in the case Microsoft already named: check the hardware manufacturer's website, which for anything on your motherboard means your board's support page.
Two specific symptoms have their own pages here rather than a line in this one. If there is no sound at all, start with no sound from onboard audio, which covers the BIOS side as well as the driver side. If the Windows installer cannot see your drive in the first place, that is a storage-controller setting rather than a missing chipset package — see BIOS storage mode.
Everything quoted above about the chipset package is Intel's own description of Intel's own software. It says nothing about AMD, and we are not going to extend it by analogy.
AMD's documentation was not reachable from here. Its support-article and download pages did not respond on five fetch attempts across two working sessions, so we could not source what AMD's chipset package contains, whether AMD describes it as a driver, or whether any of Intel's reasoning carries across. Component lists for it circulate on forum aggregators; those are not primary sources, and a page whose entire argument is "check what the vendor actually said" cannot be built on them.
So this page states nothing about the contents of AMD's chipset package. What does still hold on an AM4 or AM5 board is the part that came from Microsoft rather than from Intel — the Plug and Play behaviour, the daily Windows Update scan, the up-to-24-hour window, and View optional updates — because that is Windows behaviour and does not depend on whose silicon is underneath. The ordering advice holds too: the network drivers are still the ones that have to work before anything else can be downloaded, and they still come from your board's support page.
Every quoted sentence on this page comes from the seven vendor and platform documents linked below, read on 15 September 2026. Nothing here is a measurement: no machine was built for this page, no driver was installed or removed, no Device Manager was opened, and no timing was recorded. The "up to 24 hours" figure is Microsoft's published figure, not an observation of ours, and this page makes no claim that installing or skipping any of these downloads makes a machine faster or slower. The support-page category names are ASUS's. We could not source the equivalent MSI, GIGABYTE or ASRock labels, anything about the contents of AMD's chipset package, or any vendor instruction to reinstall drivers after a BIOS update — so this page states none of those three.
Driver & ToolsChipset category, quoted here only for the category namePublished 15 September 2026. All vendor and platform documentation quoted above was read on 15 September 2026. AMD's support and download pages were attempted on the same date and did not respond.