2 Miscellaneous

Question 1

What technology do mass storage devices use? 3 answers

Answer 1

o Magnetic
o Optical
o Solid-state technology

Question 2

What are the three standard widths of mass storage devices

Answer 2

o 5.25 inches
o 3.5 inches
o 2.5 inches

Question 3

How would you install a fixed disk?

Answer 3

o Screw the drive into the caddy
o Screw the caddy into the drive bay

Question 4

Why would you use rails with a fixed disk caddy?

Answer 4

Allows you to pull the drive out without having to open the case

Question 5

What 3 factors impact the choice of mass storage devices?

Answer 5

o Reliability
o Performance
o Use

Question 6

What type of memory does SSD Solid state drive devices use?

Answer 6

Flash memory

Question 7

Name one circumstance in which a HDD would perform better than a SSD?

Answer 7

When serving multiple-gigabyte file sizes

Question 8

Is single-level cell or multi-level cell types more reliable in SSD’s?

Answer 8

Single-level cell SLC

Question 9

What kind of connector might a SSD be installed with?

Answer 9

o SATA port
o Or mSATA
o PCIe

Question 10

What does the PSU power supply unit deliver?

Answer 10

DC Direct current low voltage power to PC Components

Question 11

What does a PSU rectifier do? (4 Steps)

Answer 11

o Converts AC alternating current building power to
o DC Direct current voltage output
o Transformers to step down to lower voltages and
o Filters and regulators to enure consistent output voltage levels

Question 12

What wattage rating is a PSU designed for use in a standard desktop PC?

Answer 12

Typically around 200-300 W

Question 13

What wattage are enterprise workstation PC’s and servers often rated?

Answer 13

o Over 300 W
o to meet demands of multiple CPU’s, additional memory modules, disk drives, and tape units.

Question 14

How much wattage might be required for a gaming pc?

Answer 14

o Over 500 W or more
o To cope with high specification of CPU and Graphics Cards

Question 15

What is the simplest way to work out a power requirement when building / upgrading a CPU system?

Answer 15

Using an online calculator

Question 16

What is the P1 Connector?

Answer 16

The motherboard’s power port is referred to as this.

Question 17

Along with a power port, what kinds of power will a PSU have?

Answer 17

o A number of Molex and or SATA device power connectors
o And 4/6/8-pin connectors for use with CPU and PCIe adapter card power ports

Question 18

Name 2 mechanisms for clamping a CPU heat sink to the motherboard

Answer 18

o Retaining clips
o Push pins

Question 19

Name a passive cooling device?

Answer 19

Heat sink

Question 20

Name an active cooling device?

Answer 20

Fans

Question 21

What is passive cooling?

Answer 21

Does not require extra energy to work

Question 22

Where are thermometer sensors used and for what purpose?

Answer 22

o Placed at each fan location
o Sets an appropriate speed and
o Detects wether a fan has failed

Question 23

How should fans and heat sinks be cleaned?

Answer 23

o With a soft brush
o Compressed air
o PC approved vacuum cleaner

Question 24

How is system memory measured? (Unit)

Answer 24

GB Gigabytes

Question 25

Why does using excessive amounts of pagefile for memory slow your computer down?

Answer 25

Because disk transfer rates are slower than RAM transfer rates.

Question 26

The bus between CPU, memory controller, and memory device consists of what two types of pathways?

Answer 26

Data pathway
Address pathway

Question 27

What determines how much information can be transferred per clock cycle of data pathways?

Answer 27

The width of the pathway.

Question 28

The width of the address bus determines what?

Answer 28

How many memory locations the CPU can keep track of and consequently limits the maximum possible amount of physical and virtual memory.

Question 29

What does a bit cell consist of? (DRAM)

Answer 29

A capacitor to hold a charge (Cell represents 1 if there is a charge and a 0 if there is not)

A transistor to read the contents of the capacior)

Question 30

How are DDR memory modules labeled?

Answer 30

Using the maxumum theoretically bandwidth (Such as PC1600, PC2100 etc)

Question 31

What are the 3 basic operations the CPU performs on each instruction?

Answer 31

Control unit fetches the next instruction in sequence from the system memory to the pipeline

Control Unit decodes each instruction in turn and either executes it itself or passes it to the ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) or FPU (Floating-point unit) for execution

The result of the executed instruction is written back to a register, to cache, or to system memory

Question 32

Name two things that impose limits to running the CPU faster?

Answer 32

Thermal and Power performance