Chapter 1 - Motherboards, Processors, And Memory Flashcards
Given a scenario, install RAM types
SODIIM DDR2 DDR3 DDR4 Single channel Dual channel Triple channel Error correcting Parity Non-parity
What is a PCB
Printed circuit board AKA motherboard, system board, main board - conductive series of pathways laminated to a nonconductive substrate that lines the bottom of the computer and can be many colors.
*connects all components together
What are some system board form factors?
ATX mATX Mini-ITX Nano-ITX Pico-ITX Mobile-ITX
Whats is ATX?
Advanced Technology Extended - a standard motherboard that puts the processor and memory inline with the fan output of the power supply, allowing the processor to run cooler and gives you capability to install full length expansion cards.
Whats a Micro ATX?
- Micro Advanced Technology Extended is a FF that is designed to work with standard ATX cases as well as its own.
- Same arrangement as standard ATX mother board.
- With this SFF you give up quantity of memory slots, headers, expansion slots, and integrated components.
Whats is ITX?
Information Technology eXtended - SFF motherboard, uses included home-theater systems, compact desktop systems, gaming systems, and embedded components.
- ITX is a family of form factors, mITX, nITX, pITX and MITX
- Mini-ITX boards are compatible with ATX chassis(where ITX ff ends)
Measurement of all ITX FF?
Mini-ITX - 6.7” x 6.7” (170mm x 170mm)
Nano-ITX - 4.7” x 4.7” (120mm x 120mm)
Pico-ITX - 3.9” x 2.8” (100mm x 72mm)
Mobile-ITX - 2.4” x 2.4” (60mm x 60mm)
Measurement of mATX?
Measures 9.6” x 9.6” (244mm x 244mm)
Measurement of ATX?
Measure 12” x 9.6” (305mm x 244mm)
What is a bus?
The path through which a device sends its data so that it can communicate with the CPU, RAM, PCIe, etc
Common collection of signal pathways
What is a serial bus?
Serial buses could only send 1 bit at a time, which used to be slow but engineers made serial transmissions work at data rates that were faster than parallel
What is a parallel bus?
Parallel buses could send 8bits of data at a time which used to be faster than serial, but because the loss of circuit length and throughput, data could only travel short distance and had trouble syncing up at the receiving end
What is throughput?
How much data could move at one time
What is circuit length?
How long the circuit could be
Types of serial specifications?
Serial Advanced Technology Attachment(SATA), Universal Serial Bus(USB), IEEE 1394/FireWire, and Peripheral Component Interconnect Express(PCIe)
What are chipsets?
Collection of chips that reduce potential bottlenecks(when we talk about data) and facilitate smooth communication between all components
Southbridge & Northbridge
What is northbridge?
A chip that manages high-speed peripheral communications; integrated video(PCIe) and processor-to-memory
Northbridge doesnt have a brand of chipset
Connected to the southbridge and helps communicate between the southbridge and the rest of the computer
What is the front side bus(FSB)
Signal pathways connecting the CPU and main memory
What is the back side bus?
BSB
Signal pathways between the CPU and external cache memory
If BSB doesnt exist, cache is placed on the FSB with the CPU and main memory
What is the southbridge?
A chipset that manages communication with slower expansion buses such as PCI, and legacy buses as well as onboard peripherals (USB, S/PATA,PS/2/ parallel ports, serial ports, etc)
These components dont need to keep up with the external clock of the CPU(dont bottleneck the system)
What is an expansion slot?
Small plastic slots used to install devices to expand its capabilities such as video, network, sound and disk interface cards
What is a PCI(peripheral component interconnect) expansion slot?
Is a shared-bus topology(data is sent parallel fashion) that operates at 33 MHz or 66 MHz over a 32-bit (4 byte) channel resulting in data rates of 133MBps and 266MBps.
Being a shared-bus topology using a 66MHz system with 33MHz and 66MHz adapters will slow all adapters to 33MHz.
PCI slots and adapters are made in 3.3V(32-bit, notch to the left) and 5V(32-bit, not to the right)
Whats is a PCIe(Peripheral Component interconnect express) expansion slot?
Uses serial communication(striping data packets across multiple serial paths to achieve higher data rates)
PCIe supports different link widths : x1, x2, x4, x8, x16, and x32 (x1, x4, and x16 are most common)
PCIe versions are specified as 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0
A single lane(1.x) and x1 slot operates at in each direction at a data rate if 250MBps, 2.x - 500MBps, 3.0 - 1GBps, 4.0 - 2GBps, 5.0 - 4GBps
To get bandwidth(throughput); multiply version by lane(link width); bidirectionally you multiply your throughput by 2
What does bidirectional mean?
Bidirectional refers to data flowing in both directions often at the same time, unidirectional means data flows in one direction
What is a NVIDIAs SLI?
Scalable link interface allows users to combine identical graphics adapters into PCIe x16 slots with a hardware bridge to form a single virtual adapter. You can use two three or four PCIe adapters.
What is a riser card?
An expansion slot that sits parralel to the motherboard that gives you additional slots
What is RAM
RAM is a small circuit board with memory chips arranged on top with metal pins (conductors) and notches in between that make contact with metallic pins on each memory module
What do i do when i get an “out of memory” message?
One solution is to use the hard drive as additional RAM by using a space called swap file or paging file which is known as virtual memory.
An inexpensive and effective way to fix this is to add more physical memory to the system
What is virtual memory?
Swap file or PAGEFILE.SYS, delivers info to RAM at the request of the memory controller
Virtual memory must be paged into RAM as the oldest content of RAM is paged out to the hard drive to make room.
Relying too much on virtual memory can slow down your entire system
What is cache memory?
Cache is a very fast form of of memory forged from static RAM(SRAM) sits between the CPU and RAM.
Cache improves system performance by predicting what the CPU will ask for next and prefetch this info before being asked
What is L1 cache?
L1 cache is the smallest and fastest, and its on the processor die itself(integrated into the chip by stamping processor pathways into silicon chip)
What is L2 cache?
Is larger but a slower than L1 cache
For processors with multiple cores, each core will have its own L1 and L2 caches
What is L3 cache?
L3 cache is larger and slower than L1 & L2 and is shared among all processor cores
What are some cache capacities of Intel i7 processor?
L1 - 64KB (32KB each for data and instructions) L2 - 256KB L3 - 4-12MB RAM - 4-64GB HDD/SSD - 100s of GB to several TB
What is a CPU?
Central Processing Unit, usually has a fan or a heat sink attached to it to draw away and disperse heat. CPU is a array of millions of transistors
What is a CPU socket?
Sockets are flat and have several columns, and holes or pins arranged in a square
Sockets are made for intel or AMD not both, make sure processor and mother board were designed for eachother
Intel usually makes LGA sockets
AMD usually makes PGA sockets
You can tell which socket(PGA/LGA) a processor uses by their processor name, is it sophisticated or unique(most)
What is a pin grid array(PGA)?
Row / column of pins that fit into the face of a ZIF socket
What is a land grid array(LGA)
grid of lands(metallic points) on the CPU
What is a zero insertion force(ZIF) socket?
Usually used in PGA
Socket that uses a plastic or metal lever on one of the lateral edges to lock or release the CPUs pins in the socket
What is a LGA compatible socket?
Has a lid that closes over the CPU and is locked in place by an L-shaped arm that borders two of the sockets edges
What is a power connector?
A power connector supplies power to the motherboard via a 24-pin white block connector
What is an integrated drive electronics(IDE)?
Acted as a hard drive , optical drive and tape drive, today are called IDE parallel ATA(advanced technology attachment)
What is a PATA?
Parallel advanced technology attachment used to transmit 8 bits or data at a time had trouble syncing up at the receiving end
Versions of SATA
SATA 1.5GBps( SATA I / SATA 150)
SATA 3.0GBps( SATA II / SATA 300)
SATA 6.0GBps( SATA III / SATA 600)
Identifiers silkscreened onto motherboards enumerate headers differentiating headers from one another and map to firmware identifiers visible within the BIOS config utility
What is firmware?
Any software that is encoded in hardware, usually in ROM chip, can run without extra instructions from OS
Most computers, large printers, and devices with no OS use firmware
What is BIOS? As
AKA ROM BIOS is a computers firmware burned into a chip, this special memory chip contains the BIOS software that boots the system and allows the operating system to interact with hardware in the computer in lieu of requiring a device driver.
One of the most important chips on the motherboard
Chip usually has BIOS stamped on it or AMI/Phoenix/Award/Winbond
On later motherboards BIOS might be hard to identify or might be integrated into the southbridge
What is UEFI?
Unified Extensible Firmware Interface
The successor of the BIOS, allows access to system resources for storage of additional modules that can be added at any time
What does the BIOS control?
BIOS controls boot options, enables/disables integrated ports/video cards, diagnostic routines that analyze the state and quality of same components it inspects during bootup
What are some features of the BIOS?
Access temperature or components
Access ambient temp of interior chassis
Enable a warning tone when temperatures are too hot and shuts down the system
Monitor fan speeds, bus speeds, voltage levels of the CPU and other vital landmarks
How to enter the BIOS?
Two passwords can be set in BIOS, the user password and supervisor password, UPW required to leave the initial power on screens and begin booting an OS, the SPW is required before entering config utility
What is the process of sealing?
Its the authentication of the BIOS and TPM being tied to the system
The BIOS coupled with the Trusted Platform Module can be configured to boot the system only after authenticating the boot device.
Sealing prohibits the devices from being used after removing them from the system
For further security, the keys created can be combined with a PIN or PW that unlocks their use or with a USB flash drive(must be inserted before booting)
What is TPM?
Trusted Platform Module is a dedicated security coprocessor or crypto processor
What is secure boot?
Process of checking digital signatures for each boot file it uses to confirm that it is the approved version and has not been tampered with.
Boot files checked include option ROM, the boot loader, and other system boot files
What is LoJack?
A UEFI-enabled security system developed by Absolute Software
Can remotely track stolen laptops as well as lock and delete certain files
what is POST(power-on self test)?
Series of system checks performed by option ROMs(System BIOS, SCSI BIOS and video BIOS)
Whats the process of POST?
POST routine verifies the integrity of the BIOS, verifies and confirms the size of primary memory.
Analyzes and catalogs buses and boot devices
BIOS offers the user a key sequence to enter the config routine as POST begins
Once POST has completed successfully, BIOS selects the boot device highest in the configured boot order and executes master boot record(MBR) which calls its associated OSs boot loader and continue booting up
What if my BOOT process is not successful?
A beep code or displayed code that indicates the issue discovered
What is flashing the BIOS?
When you upgrade the BIOS
Only certain hardware benefits from a BIOS upgrade ; drivers, change of CPU and or RAM types
When upgrading the BIOS make sure there is UPS(uninterruptible power supply)
Two important factors when upgrading BIOS(flashing)
Usually hardware is noticed immediately and has no driver that you must install, if system doesnt notice recognize hardware and theres no driver the BIOS is a logical target
Dont consult the BIOS manufacturer for upgrades, consult the motherboard or systems manufacturer vendors have personalized their BIOS code after licensing it from the BIOS publisher. Vendor will provide latest code and flashing utility for upgrades
Whats is CMOS(complementary metal oxide semiconductor)?
CMOS is the memory chip that holds the BIOS firmware settings
Information the BIOS knows natively will not be altered by CMOS, instead merged
CMOS memory is not upgradeable in terms of capacity
CMOS sometimes is integrated into the southbridge
How do you keep settings of an integrated circuit-based memory?(CMOS)
Use a CMOS battery to power CMOS memory
If you dont have power to the CMOS, all memory is lost forever
CMOS chips are susceptible to damage from electrostatic discharge(ESD) because they require very low power
What is a power button?
Turn the computer on
What is the soft power feature?
Front power button, which is a relay to the motherboard, based on how long you press depends on the affect(can be changed in BIOS) or OS.
What is a power light?
Often a green LED to assure users the button did its job(turned on machine)
What components depend on connectivity to the motherboard for its functionality?
Power button Power light Reset button Drive activity lights Audio jacks USB ports
What is a reset button?(power cycling)
Reboot the computer from a cold startup point without removing power from the components
Pressing reset button also gets around software lockups because the motherboard allows the system to reset at a hardware level
One disadvantage of reset button?(power cycling)
Certain circuits such as memory chips, need time to drain their charge for the reboot to be successful
What is a drive activity light?
Hard disks drives LED on the faceplate of computer
Disadvantage of drive activity light?
Cant know what drive is currently active, minor concern
What is an audio jack?
An audio connection that uses a 3.5mm jack
Motherboards that accommodate legacy AC’97 analog ports or HD audio can be changed in the BIOS settings
What is a USB port?
Provides a connection to USB devices
What major brands make CPUs?
Intel and AMD (should be compatible with every PC)
Three important components of computers?
CPU(processor), all computers have one, brain of a computer
Motherboard, spine of the computer
RAM, memory of the computer
What does a CPUs function?
Control and direct all the activities of the computer using both external and internal buses
Whats important to know about processors?
The motherboard and CPU need to be made for eachother, the rest of the hardware plugs into the motherboard and will be CPU brand agnostic
What is a DIP(Dual in-line package)?
Used to be what PCs used as CPUs, 2 rows 20 pin array
Where is the CPU usually located?
Near the RAM to improve speed
What is multicore?
Multiple set of instruction pathways through the processor(process multiple tasks at a time)
Each core operates as its own independent processor
What is Hyperthreading?
Refers to intels Hyper-threading technology(HTT)
HTT-capable processors appear to the OS to be two processors, as a result the OS can schedule two processes at the same time
Allows more than one thread(data throughput) to run on each core, two cores let 4 threads run, 4 cores lets 8 threads run
What is symmetric multiprocessing?(SMP)
Symmetric multiprocessing(SMP) is where two or more processors use the same system resources
What is superscalar architecture?
A method of parallel computing used in many processors, manages multiple instructions and executes multiple instructions during a clock cycle
What is simultaneous multithreading?(SMT)
Parallelization or dividing up work for simultaneous processing
Instead of giving a large workload to a single core, threaded programs split the work into multiple software threads to save time
What is throttling?
Adjusting the clock speed of the CPU, throttling is used to automatically slow down the computer to use less energy and conserve battery
What is clock frequency?
The speed of the processor measured in MHz or GHz
What is piezoelectric effect?
Quartz crystal(XTL) vibrating when exposed to a current
What is the quartz crystal(XTL) considered?
Known as the system clock, keeps the time for the flow of data on the motherboard
How the FSB uses the clock leads to an effective clock rate known as the FSB speed which is computed differently for different types of RAM
What are the function of data lines between the CPU and the primary memory of the system?
Depending on if its 32bit or 64bits wide, the wider the data lines(bus) the more data that can be processed per unit of time
What is intel and AMDs virtualization called?
Intels - virtualization technology(VT)
AMD - AMD-V(for virtualization)
Does BIOS support virtualization?
BIOS and OS must support virtualization for it to work
You must manually enable virtualization support in the BIOS before it can be used
If you want to check if intels processor supports virtualization, check its support of VT by checking the intel processor identification utility
Is there a limit to memory?
Yes, motherboards, OSs and CPUs have memory limits
What is parity checking?
error-checking scheme that offers no error correction
Works on a byte, or 8 bits of data. A ninth bit is added at the transmitting end and removed at the receiving end so it doesnt affect data
If the receiving end does not agree with the parity, a parity error results
What are the four parity schemes affecting the ninth bit known as?
Even - used in systems that compute parity
Odd - used in systems that compute parity
Mark - a digital pulse, 1 (used in systems that do not compute parity, but expects a fixed bit value in parity location)
Space - lack of a pulse , 0 (used in systems that do not compute parity, but expects a fixed bit value in parity location)
How is parity on a memory module?
8 memory chips form a set, for every byte in memory, one bit is stored in each of the eight chips, a ninth chip is added to support the parity bit in systems that require it.
For those modules that have fewer than eight or 9 chips mounted on them, more than 1 bit for every byte is being handled by some of the chips. If you see 3 chips mounted, the two larger chips customarily handle 4 bits, from each byte stored and the third smaller chip handles the parity
What is a memory bank?
One or more of a memory module
Bank of memory is required for the computer system to recognize electrically that the minimum or proper number of memory has been installed
What is Error checking and correction(ECC)?
Detects errors and corrects on the fly. Can detect single- and double-bit errors and actually correct single-bit errors.
If in 8 bits there are 2 with errors ECC can recognize it not correct it
What is single- and double-sided memory?
One module has chips on one side and one module has chips on both sides
Double sided memory is treated by the system as two separate memory modules
Motherboards that support DSM have memory controllers that switch between the two sides, can only access the side to which they switched
DSM allows more memory to be inserted, unlike single sided memory which requires no switching by the memory controller
