CompTIA Part 1 : Computer Hardware

Question 1

(MotherBoard-Heart of Computer)

Form Factors

Answer 1

Size and shape of the motherboard, but also you need to take into account the power supply. Different power supplies use different connectors. 5 current and most popular form factors are:

Standard-ATX,

Micro-ATX,

Mini-ITX,

Nano-ITX,

Pico-ITX

Question 2

(MotherBoard-Heart of Computer)

Standard-ATX motherboard

Answer 2

12” x 9.6” largest of the current motherboards

it is very common we still use very large towers

Question 3

(MotherBoard-Heart of Computer)

Micro-ATX

Answer 3

9.6” x 9.6” has a similar design and layout as the standard-ATX usually has less expansion slots, but that can be curcumvented by other technology like a graphics card that will have a chip in it for expansion.

Question 4

(MotherBoard-Heart of Computer)

Mini-ITX

Answer 4

Largest of the ITX series 6.7 x 6.7

Question 5

(MotherBoard-Heart of Computer)

Nano-ITX

Answer 5

4.7” x 4.7

Question 6

(MotherBoard-Heart of Computer)

Pico-ITX

Answer 6

3.8” x 3.8” usually found in specialized devices like a router a benefit of smaller devices is low power consumption

Question 7

(MotherBoard-Heart of Computer)

BUS it’s not really a public bus it’s more like the highway systems a bus would drive on. Its all the circuitry the data travels on and how data flows around form one component to the next on the motherboard.

Not to be confussed with a BUS slot which actually are Expansion Slots and are the following: ISA Slots, PCI Slots and AGP Slots.

Answer 7

North Bridge: is what’s most specifically responsible for allowing data to communicate back and forth between memory (RAM) and the processor. This usually will include the memory card because it usually has it’s own memory because of resource intensive for graphics

South Bridge: has to do with the connection of all your other devices, drives, external porst expansion slots and things like that.

Help you remember the north bridge is specifically between processor and memory.

south bridge kind of everything else if a question on the test talks about a problem with communication between the motherboard or something its the south bridge

Question 8

(MotherBoard-Heart of Computer)

Expansion Slots

Answer 8

Come in several variations

PCI-Express

32-bit PCI

PCI-X (X stands for extended)

PCI-e (Newest and fastest)

Laptop:

MiniPCI

MiniPCI Express

Riser Slots:

AMR (always towards center of motherboard)

CNR (always towards the end of a motherboard)

ACR (not very common-only on Asus motherboards)

Question 9

(MotherBoard-Heart of Computer)

Front Panel Connectors

Answer 9

usually referred to as jumpers

pins that are sticking up

that can open or close a circuit to link things to the front of the case

Question 10

Processor Operation

Answer 10

Processors work in cycles.

The speed of a processor is how many cycles it has the ability to process each second.

fetch

decode

execute

store

Question 11

Processor Speeds

Answer 11

Hertz = the number of cycles

There is also a BUS speed

Question 12

Processor Speeds

Overclocking

Answer 12

Overclocking = Running the CPU higher than a recommended speed

you risk potential overheating

Question 13

Processor Speeds

Dynamic frequency scaling (CPU Throtteling)

Answer 13

You can automatically change the speed or frequency to help keep form overheating

Question 14

Processor Speeds

actual speed itself

Answer 14

is measured by applying the clock multiplier to the frontside bus speed

e.g. a process running at 3200 mghz or 3.2 ghz might be using a 400 mghz front side bus and a 8 times clock multiplier and that’s how they get to the 3200 mghz or the 3.2 ghz

The theoretical speed is not the same speeds that are listed

Question 15

Processor Width

Answer 15

This is the actual size of the highway

two common width 32 bit and 64 bit processors

Question 16

32-bit (x86)

Answer 16

it’s called the x86 which was just a designation at the time way back it doesn’t mean it’s bigger than a 64 bit system

4 GB RAM Maximum

Question 17

64 -bit (x64)

Answer 17

64-bit system

16 EB RAM Maximum

Question 18

Threading

Answer 18

A creative way to make processors faster.

In RAM you have data for a task and you have data for a second task they can only process one task or thread at a time. But with multi threading (hyper threading) you could almost vurtualize two processors in a single physical processors. Keep in mind there is one processing core we’ve just got it to be able to multitask.

Question 19

Socket Types