Introduction to the Personal Computer System Flashcards
What is Form Factor?
Physical Design and Look of a computing device
What does computer chassis, cabinet, tower, housing or box refer to?
Computer case
What is an AT Power Supply used for?
Advanced Technology Power Supply is for legacy computer systems now obsolete
What is an AT Extended Power Supply used for?
Updated version of AT but still considered obsolete
The ATX12V Power Supply, what is this used for?
Most common power supply on the market today. It includes another power supply for the CPU
What is the EPS12V Power Supply used for?
Was originally designed for network servers but now commonly used for high-end desktop models
What are the facts about 20-pin or 24-pin slotted connector?
Used for motherboard. 20-pin connector has two rows of 10 pins. 24-pin connector has two rows of 12 pins
what is a SATA keyed connector
Connects to disk drives, the connector is wider and thinner than a Molex connector.
What is a Molex keyed connector
connects to hard drives, optical drives or other devices
What is the Berg keyed connector?
Connect to legacy floppy drives and is smaller than a Molex connector
What is the 4-pin to 8-pin auxillary power connector used for?
Connector has two rows of two or four pins and supplies power to different areas of the motherboard and CPU.
what are the facts about 6 to 8-pin PCIe power connector?
Connector has two rows of three or four pins and supplies power to internal components (e.g. graphics card).
What is the +12V Wire on a power connector used for and what color is it?
it is the Yellow wire and used for Disk drive motors, fans, cooling devices, and the system bus slots
What is the -12V Wire on a power connector used for and what color is it?
it is the Blue wire and used for some type of serial port circuits and early programmable read only memory (PROM)
What is the +3.3V Wire on a power connector used for and what color is it?
it is the Orange wire on a power connection, it is used for most newer CPUs, some type of system memory, and AGP video cards and is not on the AT power supply
What is the +5V Wire on a power connector used for and what color is it?
it is the Red wire which is used for motherboards, baby AT and earlier CPUs, and many motherboard components
What is the -5V Wire on a power connector used for and what color is it?
It is the white wire and used for ISA bus cards and early PROMS
What is the 0V Wire on a power connector used for and what color is it?
It is the black wire and used to complete circuits with the other voltages
What is the equation for voltage?
V= IR, Voltage = Current x Resistance
What is the equation for power?
P = VI, Power = Voltage x Current
What should you pay attention to when purchasing a power supply?
The wattage, so that it has more than enough power to handle the current components
What is a Voltage selector switch?
It sets the input voltage to the power supply to either 110V / 115V or 220V / 230V. A power supply with this switch is called a dual voltage power supply.
Can you open a power supply?
No, DO NOT open a power supply. Electronic capacitors located inside of the power supply can hold a charge for extended periods of time.
What is the BIOS and UEFI?
The Basic Input and Output System (BIOS) is used to help boot the computer and manage the flow of data between the hard drive, video card, keyboard, mouse and more. UEFI enhances the BIOS and specifies a different software interface for boot and runtime services but still has to rely on the BIOS for system configuration, POST and setup.
What is the Chipset and what is it used for?
Consists of the integrated circuits on the motherboard that control how system hardware interacts with the CPU and motherboard. It also establishes how much memory can be added to the motherboard and type of connectors on the motherboard
What does the North Bridge do?
Controls high speed access to the RAM and video card and how fast the CPU communicates with all other components in the computer.
What does the South Bridge do?
Allows the CPU to communicated with slower speed devices including hard drives, Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports, and expansion slots
What are the specifications for an ATX Motherboard
The most common motherboard form factor, it is 12in x 9.6in and accommodates the integrated I/O ports.
What are the specifications for an Micro-ATX Motherboard
A smaller form factor designed to be backward compatible with ATX. These often use the same North-bridge and South-bridge chipsets and power connectors as a full-size ATX board, but have fewer expansion slots. 9.6in X 9.6in
What are the specifications for an Mini-ITX Motherboard
Designed for small devices such as thin clients and set-top boxes. Uses very little power, so fans are not needed to keep it cool. It only has one PCI slot for expansion cards. Measured at 6.7in X 6.7in
What are the specifications for an ITX Motherboard
This form factor has gained popularity because of its very small size. Comparabel to Micro-ATX measuring at 8.5in X 7.5in
What is PGA?
Pin Grid Array architecture are when the pins are on the underside of the processor which is inserted into the motherboard CPU socket using Zero Insertion Force (ZIF).
What is LGA?
The pins are in the socket instead of on the processor.
What is RISC?
Reduced Instruction Set Computer, an architecture that uses a relatively small set of instructions very rapidly.
What is CISC?
Complex Instruction Set Computer, an architecture that uses a broad set of instructions, resulting in fewer steps per operation. When the CPU is executing one step of the program the remaining instructions and data are stored in high-speed memory called cache.
What is Hyper-Threading?
An intel performance enhancing feature for intel CPUs. It enables multiple pieces of code (threads) to be executed simultaneously.
What is HyperTransport?
An AMD performance enhancing feature for AMD CPUs. It is a high-speed connection between the CPU and the Northbridge chip.
The power of the CPU is measured by what?
The speed and amount of data that it can process. The speed of a CPU is rated in cycles per second called Megahertz or billions of cycles per second called Gigahertz.
The Front Side Bus determines what?
It determines the amount of data that a CPU can process at one time. It is also considered a CPU bus or the processor data bus. Current processors use a 32-bit or 64-bit FSB.
What is Overclocking?
It is a technique used to make a processor work at a faster speed than its original specification. It is not recommended to do because it can result in damage to the CPU
What is Throttling?
A technique used when the processor runs at less than the rated speed to conserve power or produce less heat. This is commonly on laptops and other mobile devices.
multicore processors
Conserve power and produce less heat than single core processors. Ram is shared between the cores because the cores reside on the same chip. This is recommended for applications such as video editing, gaming, and photo manipulation.
What is a NXbit?
Also called the execute disable bit, is a feature that needs to be supported and enabled by the OS, it protects areas of memory that contain the OS files from malicious attacks by malware.
What is the difference between Active and Passive Cooling.
Active solutions require power and passive solutions do not.
What should computers with extremely fast CPUs and GPUs use for cooling?
Water-cooling system
What is a byte?
A grouping of digital information and represents information such as letters, numbers and symbols. A byte is a block of eight bits stored as either 0 or 1 in the memory chip.
What is a ROM?
An essential computer chip and is read-only memory. Rom chips are located on the motherboard and other circuit boards and contain instructions that can be directly accessed by a CPU. These instructions include basic operation s like booting the computer and loading the OS
What is a PROM?
Programmable ROM. information is written to a PROM chip after it is manufactured. PROM cannot be erased or re-written
What is an EPROM?
Erasable PROM. Information is written to an EPROM chip can be erased with exposure to UV light. Special equipment is required.
What is an EEPROM?
Electrically EPROM. Information is written to an EEPROM chip after it is manufactured. EEPROM chips are also called Flash ROMs. EEPROM chip can be erased and re-written without having to remove the chip from the computer.
What is DRAM?
Dynamic RAM is a memory chip that is used as main memory. Must be refreshed with pulses of electricity in order to maintain data within the chip.
What is SRAM?
Static RAM is a memory chip that is used as cache memory. Does not have to be refreshed as often as DRAM. It is located in the CPU.
What is SDRAM?
Synchronous DRAM is DRAM that operates in synchronization with the memory bus. The memory bus is the data path between the CPU and the main memory.
What is DDR SDRAM?
Double Data Rate Synchronous Dynamic RAM is memory that transfers data twice as fast as SDRAM. Transferring data twice per clock cycle.