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A+ Certification 901 > Hardware Part 1 > Flashcards

Hardware Part 1 Flashcards

1
Q

What is a Form Factor?

A

Physical dimensions/ specifications (in reference to hardware).

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2
Q

What is BIOS (basic input output system)?

A

The 16 bit firmware for your computer.

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3
Q

What is UEFI?

A

The 64 bit replacement for BIOS. It comes on a UEFI chip.

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4
Q

What is CMOS?

A

The little bug chips on the motherboard that contain the BIOS. This is powered by a CR-20-32 watch battery.

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5
Q

What is MicroATX?

A

It is a motherboard form factor. It is square, 6.75 x 6.75 in. Or 9.6 x 9.6 in. It is used for small form factor computers (ex. Compact computers).

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6
Q

What is Mini-ITX?

A

A motherboard form factor. Used for small form factor computers (SFF). Low power use.

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7
Q

What is a Chipset?

A

The chipset helps the CPU process things. There is a Northbridge and Southbridge chipset. The Northbridge is the Memory Controller Hub (MCH) and the Southbridge is the (I/O) Controller Hub (ICH). The Northbridge is higher priority and faster.

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8
Q

What is a DIE?

A

The technical term for the CPU.

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9
Q

What is a BUS?

A

Communication system that transfers data between system components.

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10
Q

What is a Parallel BUS?

A

Conventional PCI.

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11
Q

What is a Serial BUS?

A

Express PCI.

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12
Q

What is LGA?

A

The current standard for CPU sockets.

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13
Q

What are PCI Expansion cards/slots?

A

??????

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14
Q

What is a 3-Pin Molex Connector?

A

This is the type of connector used for fans.

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15
Q

What is RAM (Random Access Memory)?

A

Volatile computer data storage.

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16
Q

What is ROM (Read Only Memory)?

A

Permanent or semi permanent data storage.

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17
Q

What is EEPROM?

A

BIOS/UEFI ROM. EEPROM is used in smartphones.

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18
Q

What is Flash Memory?

A

Memory that can retain its contents without power. It is used in flash drives and hard drives.

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19
Q

What is SRAM?

A

Static RAM.

  • It is used in processors for cache memory.
  • It does not need a periodic refresh cycle like DRAM.
  • It is much faster, but also more expensive.
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20
Q

What is DRAM?

A

Dynamic RAM.

  • Standard volatile memory.
  • Dynamic refers to the need for an electrical refresh every 15 ms to maintain contents.
  • Not used anymore. Now we use SDRAM.
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21
Q

What determines cache effectiveness?

A

Cache Effectiveness = Hit Ratio

A high hit ratio means that the processor can find the information it needs in the cache a high percentage of the time.

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22
Q

What is a cache miss?

A

This is when the processor thinks the data is in cache, but it isn’t.

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23
Q

What is SDRAM?

A

Synchronous Dynamic RAM.

  • This is the new standard for RAM.
  • Cycles run in sync with the motherboard clock, which makes it faster.
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24
Q

What are the three generations of SDRAM?

A
  • DDR: Two transfers per cycle (not twice as fast)
  • DDR2: Lower voltage. Less cross talk.
  • DDR3: Even lower voltage. Thermal sensor capability. This is the standard for today.
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25
Q

What is SO-DIMM?

A

Small Outline module.

  • This is memory for smaller devices like laptops and smartphones.
  • Smaller form factors of the SO-DIMM are the Mini-DIMM and Micro-DIMM
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26
Q

What is Cas-Latency?

A

Column Address Strobe-Latency

  • It is a measure of the number of clock cycles that pass from when an instruction is given to the RAM module to produce data to when it can produce the data.
  • All you need to know about this is that LOWER NUMBERS ARE BETTER when it comes to Cas-Latency.
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27
Q

The module type corresponds to what measure?

A

The module transfer rate which is measured in MBps (Megabytes per second).

Module types will appear as something like PC1600 or PC 3200.

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28
Q

The chip type corresponds to what measure?

A

The BUS speed which is measured in MTps (transactions per second).

Chip types will appear as something like DDR200 or DDR166

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29
Q

What unit is the clock speed measured in?

A

MHz (millions of cycles per second).

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30
Q

Single sided vs. double sided RAM?

A

Single sided: has one rank (bank) of memory chips that functions as a unit. (Single sided is better and faster)

Double sided: has two separate memory ranks.

This has nothing to do with SIMM or DIMM. You can only tell the difference between single and double sided if you look at the specifications.

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31
Q

What is Parity?

A

Adds an extra bit to perform basic error detection in RAM.

  • Parity uses up some of your RAM.
  • If Parity finds an error, the system is likely to crash, because parity does not fix the errors it finds.
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32
Q

What is ECC

A

Error Correcting Code RAM.

  • This is like Parity, but it corrects the errors it finds.
  • ECC is more expensive and is generally used in servers.
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33
Q

What are channels?

A

Channels increase the transfer rate between SDRAM and the Memory Controller Hub (MCH).

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34
Q

Buffered vs. Unbuffered RAM?

A

Buffered (registered) RAM has extra circuitry to maintain system stability. It is generally used in servers.

Unbuffered RAM does not have this feature.

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35
Q

What is a Riser Card?

A

It is an expansion card that can be mounted horizontally to allow smaller form factor computer cases to accommodate full sized expansion cards.

36
Q

What is GPU?

A

Graphics Processing Unit. It is the CPU on a graphics (video) card.

37
Q

What is PCI and PCIe?

A

Peripheral Component Interconnect (Express)

it is a bus standard. PCI allows for the connection of peripheral devices (network card, graphics card, etc.) to the CPU.

38
Q

What is the Thunderbolt Interface?

A

It is an Apple connector much like USB.

  • Just like USB, it can carry video and power.
  • Apple Thunderbolt is ACTIVE, whereas the very similar Mini DisplayPort is PASSIVE.
39
Q

What is a video capture card?

A

It can transfer video from VCR, DVR, or console into your PC.

40
Q

What is a TV Tuner card?

A

It can send cable TV into your computer, instead of your TV, so that you can use your computer as a DVR. The video can than be redirected back to your TV.

41
Q

What are Cellular Cards?

A

They allow a computer to be online wherever the cellphone has service.

42
Q

What is an Old-School Communication Card?

A

They provide parallel and serial ports that allow you to connect things like printers and networking equipment.

43
Q

What is a sound card?

A

An expansion card that improves sound quality beyond what comes with the motherboard.

USB microphones and audio interfaces are external sound cards.

44
Q

What are the two major brands of external hard drive?

A

USB and FireWire, but USB has pretty much beaten FireWire.

45
Q

What is the reader on a hard disk drive called?

A

An Actuator Arm.

46
Q

What is the difference between PATA and SATA?

A

Each is a type of hard disk drive. PATA is Parallel ATA and SATA is Serial ATA. Obviously, parallel is slower.

  • PATA uses a 40-pin cable
  • SATA uses a much smaller and more efficient cable.
47
Q

Difference between SCSI and SAS?

A

SAS stands for Serial Attached SCSI. SCSI is a command language that allows computers to communicate with peripheral devices.

  • SAS is more expensive than SCSI, so it is mostly used on servers.
  • SAS is also much easier to install.
48
Q

What are the names of the low level formats on a hard drive?

A
  1. Track (cylinder): this is a ring toward the inner part of each head and continues on vertically through all the heads.
  2. Sector Track: A collection of tracks from the inside to the outside. It looks like a pie slice.
  3. Sector: A track is divided into a number of sectors. This will be a section of the track inside the pie slice.
  4. Cluster: The smallest element of data storage on a hard drive. On the picture, it looks like a track on the outer edge that continues through several sectors, but doesn’t go all the way around.
49
Q

What determines mechanical hard drive speed?

A
  1. Rotational Speed
  2. Latency

The higher the rotational speed, the lower the latency.

50
Q

Mechanical hard drives fail when the moving parts wear out. When do solid state drives fail?

A

When they’ve reached their manufacturer limit of read/write cycles.

A flash drive is a small solid state drive.

51
Q

What kinds of flash memory cards are there?

A
  1. Compact Flash: These are big and hard to break.
  2. SD Card: These are small and durable. Remember that SD cards come in different classes and some hardware requires a certain class. Modern phones and tablets mostly use the e.MMC standard.
  3. There are also some proprietary cards.

There are adapters that allow you to change the form factor of a card (ex. an adapter can allow a micro SD card to fit into a standard SD card slot.

52
Q

What is a hard drive enclosure?

A

Enclosures allow you to place a hard drive inside and then plug it into another computer externally with a USB cable.

53
Q

What is RAID? What kinds are there?

A

Redundant Array of Independent Disks.

RAID 0: When you take two drives and "stripe" data across them. This provides no redundancy, but increases read/write speed. The downside is that if you lose one disk, you lose everything.
Raid 1: "Disk Mirroring" copies each write on one disk onto the other. This means you data is safe if one drive fails, but doing this means you have half the storage space, reads will be average, and writes will be slower.
RAID 5: Disk Striping with parity. RAID 5 requires 5 disks, has fast reads, and slow writes. If any of the drives are lost, the data can be reconstructed from the other drives, but this is at the cost of one drive of space.
RAID 01 (RAID 0+1): a set of drives will be striped and then another set of drives will mirror them.
RAID 10 (Raid 1+0): One set of drives will mirror each other, but they will be striped together onto another set of mirroring drives.

(If you set up RAID using Disk Manager, all the drives involved will be put under one drive letter.)

54
Q

What is an Optical Drive?

A

It is a disk drive. The disk standards are below in order of increasing capacity:

  • CD-ROM: Read only
  • CD-RW: Rewritable
  • DVD-ROM/DVD-RW/DVD RW DL: Digital Versatile Disk (DL is dual layer).
  • Blue-Ray
  • BD-R
  • BD-RE
55
Q

What are the advantages of tape drives?

A
  • Reliable
  • Back-ups can be encrypted
  • Large amount of storage
  • Some companies will take the physical back-ups offsite for safe keeping.
  • Tape drives can be internal or external.
  • A downside to tape drives is that they write slower. A way around this is to do a disk to disk to tape back-up, because disk backups are relatively fast.
56
Q

What is a Quartz Crystal Oscillator?

A

A chip on the motherboard that keeps all the parts of the computer in sync.

  • Quartz oscillates (vibrates) at a particularly steady speed.
  • Hertz = Clock Cycle
57
Q

What kind of buses are there?

A
  • Internal Registers: The paths for data flow within the CPU.
  • Data Bus: Carries the data to RAM and other places.
  • Address Bus figures out where the data needs to go. (It deals in memory addresses).
58
Q

What does LGA mean?

A

Land Grid Array. It is a type of CPU socket.

59
Q

What is the number that comes before LGA

Ex: 775 LGA

A

It represents the number of contacts on the socket.

60
Q

What are some of the recent Intel socket types?

A
  • LGA 775
  • LGA1150
  • LGA 1155 (Sandy Bridge Architecture)
  • LGA 1156 (Integrated North Bridge)
  • LGA 1366 (Triple channel RAM: Separate north bridge
  • LGA 2011 (Six cores, quad channel, overclocking)
61
Q

What are some recent AMD socket types?

A
  • AM3 (941 contacts)
  • AM3+ (942 contacts)
  • FM1(905 contacts)
  • FM2 (904 contacts)
  • FM2+ (906 contacts)
62
Q

What is clock speed?

A

It is the speed of the processor, which is generally measured in gigahertz.

63
Q

What is cache?

A
  • Very fast RAM
  • Located on the processor itself
  • Very small amount of storage.
64
Q

What is the core?

A

The brain of the CPU. This is the part of the CPU that actually does all the work.

65
Q

What are the different types of CPU caches?

A
  • Dedicated L1:
    @ The most critical data is in the L1 cache, because it is closest.
    @ Lowest latency.
    @ 2 loads per cycle.
  • Dedicated L2:
    @ Sized to accommodate the majority of working sets.
    @ Dedicated to eliminate conflicts common in shared caches.
    @ Better for virtualization.
  • Shared L3:
    @ Victim-cache architecture maximizes efficiency of cache hierarchy.
    @ Fills from L3 leave likely shared lines in the L3.
    @ Sharing-aware replacement policy.
    @ Ready for expansion at the right time for customers
66
Q

What is Hyperthreading?

A

This sets up two logical cores for each physical core in the CPU.

Although the CPU can still only do one action at a time in each physical core, it can schedule actions more efficiently.

67
Q

What is virtualization support?

A

The two types are:

  • Intel VT-X
  • AMD-V

It is a set of instructions in the processor that allows it to differentiate between physical and virtual hardware access.

Virtualization is when processor, memory, storage , and network hardware is shared among one or more virtual computers.

68
Q

What’s the difference between 32 bit and 64 bit?

A

32 bit CPU’s are limited to about 4 billion memory addresses (2^32=4 billion), with each address equaling 1 bit. This means that it can handle no more than 4 GB of RAM.

64 bit could theoretically support up to 16.8 million terabytes of RAM

69
Q

What is the No-Execute bit?

A

Sometimes written as NX or (execute disable) XD.

It is an option in UEFI. If it is on, the processor will segregate RAM for its own use. This reduces the chance that malware can corrupt key areas of the system.

Downside: sometimes it can cause compatibility issues. If it does, simply turn it off.

70
Q

What are heat sinks made of?

A

Aluminum alloy.

They are secured to the CPU with a thermal paste.

It can also have a showed over them that directs airflow away from it.

71
Q

What is an alternative to heat sinks?

A

Liquid based cooling. With this type of system, focus on cooling the:

  • CPU (Central Processing Unit)
  • GPU ( Graphical Processing Unit)
  • Chipset
72
Q

What should you look for in a motherboard?

A
  1. Mobo (motherboard)
  2. CPU Socket
  3. Chipset

These determine the limits on what kind of processor you can use.

73
Q

How do I know how hot my CPU is?

A
  • UEFI

- Third party utilities

74
Q

What is the difference between analog and digital?

A

Analog communicates information using a variety of values (or various amplitudes in the electrical pulses).

Digital is binary and communicates using two values, 0 and 1 (or two distinct amplitudes in the electrical pulses).

75
Q

What does USB stand for?

A

Universal Serial Bus

76
Q

What are the data and power transfer speeds for each version of USB?

A
  • V1.1 (1998): 12Mbps
  • V2 (2000): 480 Mbps & 500 mA (Mili Amps)
  • V3 (2008): 5Gbps & 900 mA (V3 is often colored blue and will say “SS” for super speed.)
  • V3.1 (2013): 10 Gbps
77
Q

What are the different form factors of USB?

A
  1. A:
    - Mainstream, widely used
  2. B:
    - Every size except form factor A.
    - 2.0 micro B and 2.0 mini B are very small and are used for smaller devices.
    - 3.0 micro B is the size used to charge the Galaxy S5
    - 2.0 standard B and 3.0 standard B are used for larger devices like printers and copiers.

All USB form factors are backward compatible.

78
Q

What are SATA (Serial ATA) and USB transfer speeds measured in?

A
  • USB is measured in megabits per second

- SATA is measured in megabytes per second

79
Q

What type of connector is used for Ethernet?

A

RJ-45

80
Q

What type of connector is used for phones?

A

RJ-11

81
Q

What is thunderbolt?

A

A mac network connector similar to HDMI. It can transfer video, audio, power, and can network computers together.

82
Q

Are thunderbolt and mini DisplayPort connectors compatible?

A

Sort of.

You can use a Thunderbolt connection to connect to a DisplayPort device, but you can’t use a DisplayPort connection to connect to a Thunderbolt device.

83
Q

What type of connectors are used for monitors?

A
  • VGA (Video Graphics Array): This is the typical old style connector. It uses analog
  • DVI (Digital Video Interface): This is newer and uses digital.
  • HDMI: Carries video AND audio, unlike VGA and DVI, which only carry video.
  • TRS (Tip Ring Sleeve): Carries audio and is often used with VGA or DVI. It is the connector often used for headphones or speakers. The rings separate the connector into segments. Each segment operates at a different frequency.
84
Q

What does PAN stand for?

A

Personal Area Network

85
Q

What types of wireless connectors are there?

A
  • Bluetooth
  • Infrared (IR): Uses PCM (Pulse Code Modulation), which means it needs line of sight.
  • Radio Frequency (RF): Bluetooth is a subset of this.
  • Near Field Communication (NFC):
    @ It is not Bluetooth or IR
    @ An example of it is Apple Pay, where you pay for things with your phone by waving your phone over a reader.

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