PC Components

Question 1

The components of a desktop computer system are divided between: ?

Answer 1

Peripherals (for user) and those encased in the chassis (which would be damaged or would be dangerous if exposed).

Question 2

The chassis is: ?

Answer 2

a plastic and metal box that houses this second class of components, such as the motherboard, Central Processing Unit (CPU), memory, adapter cards, disk drives, and power supply unit. System units are also often referred to as boxes, main units, or base units.

Question 3

What are the two basic types of system unit: ?

Answer 3

Tower and Small Form Factor (SFF). These types are available in different sizes.

Question 4

A tower case is designed to ?

Answer 4

sit vertically on a surface, so that it is taller than it is wide.

Question 5

Tower cases come in what four sizes?

Answer 5

full, mid, mini, and slim line

Question 6

Full tower cases are usually used for?

Answer 6

PC servers. These require the extra internal space for additional hard disks, adapter cards, and redundant power supply units.

Question 7

Mid tower cases are used for?

Answer 7

high-end user PCs. These PCs do require extra devices and adapter cards, but not as many as a server.

Question 8

Mini tower cases are used for?

Answer 8

office or home PCs where the requirement for additional internal devices and adapter cards is limited.

Question 9

Slimline cases require?

Answer 9

low-profile adapter cards but can be oriented horizontally or vertically.

Question 10

Small Form Factor (SFF) case designs are ?

Answer 10

semi-portable, space-saving designs typically used for domestic entertainment or Media Center systems that will not look out of place in a living room. They are usually cube-like or super slimline. SFF cases can hold only a limited number of components.

Question 11

An all-in-one unit means?

Answer 11

all the computer components, except the keyboard and mouse, are contained within the monitor case.

Question 12

Each case has a (i) ?

Answer 12

cover, which is removed by either undoing the screws at the back or pressing together clips that release it. Cases based on the slimline design have a hinged cover that releases to allow access to the motherboard.

Question 13

The front panel provides access to ?

Answer 13

the removable media drives, a power on/off switch, a reset switch, and LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) to indicate drive operation.

The front cover can be removed but may require the side panel to be removed first in order to access the screws or clips that secure it.

Question 14

Tool free access means?

Answer 14

Secured by clips.

Question 15

The rear panel has?

Answer 15

cut-out slots aligned with the position of adapter card slots.

Question 16

The rear panel cut out slots should be covered by?

Answer 16

an adapter card or a metal strip known as a blanking plate. Uncovered slots can disrupt the proper flow of air around components in the PC and cause overheating and also increase the amount of dust in the system.

Question 17

PSU ?

Answer 17

Power Supply Unit

Question 18

field replaceable units (FRUs)?

Answer 18

PC components that are easily user-replaceable (or upgradeable). most components of a PC are not worth repairing; instead they are simply replaced with a new unit (“swapped out”).

Question 19

To disassemble a PC, follow these steps:

Answer 19

1. Power down the PC and remove the power cable.
2. With the power cable removed, press and hold the power button for a few seconds. This should ensure that the circuits within the computer are completely de-energized.
3. Find the screws that secure the cover to the system case and unscrew them.

Some system case lids have clips instead of or as well as these screws. Remember to keep the screws in a secure place.

4. Once the system case lid is removed, you can access the internal devices and begin to remove them.

Question 20

The motherboard (a printed circuit board) houses…

Answer 20

the processor, chipset, memory, and expansion slots. The type of motherboard influences system speed and upgrade capabilities

Question 21

The mobo form factor describes its…

Answer 21

shape, layout, and the type of case and power supply that can be used. Two motherboards may have exactly the same functionality but different form factors; the difference is the layout of the components on the motherboard.

Question 22

ATX mobo form factor ?

Answer 22

The Advanced Technology Extended (ATX) specification was developed by Intel in 1995 to provide a new design for PC motherboards, updating the previous AT form factor.

Full size ATX boards are 12 inches wide by 9.6 inches deep (or 305 x 244 mm).

ATX boards can contain up to seven expansion slots.

Question 23

mATX (micro) ?

Answer 23

The Micro-ATX (mATX) standard specifies a 9.6-inch (244 x 244 mm) square board.

mATX boards have fewer expansion slots than ATX boards (up to 4 compared to a maximum of 7 for full-sized ATX boards).

Note: Most mATX boards can be mounted in ATX cases.

Question 24

Mini-ITX

Answer 24

Small Form Factor (SFF) PCs are becoming popular as home machines (and in image-conscious offices). SFF PCs often use VIA’s Mini-ITX form factor.

Mini-ITX is 6.7 inches (170 x 170 mm) square with one expansion slot.

Note: Most mini-ITX boards can be mounted in ATX cases.

Question 25

Other ITX-based forms?

Answer 25

There are also smaller nano-, pico-, and mobile-ITX form factors factors, but these are used for EMBEDDED systems and PORTABLES, rather than PCs.

Note: No commercial motherboards were ever produced from the original plain ITX specification.

Question 26

New motherboards are generally released to?

Answer 26

support new CPU designs. Most PC CPUs are manufactured by Intel and AMD, and these vendors use different socket designs.

Also, because technology changes rapidly, a given motherboard will only support a limited number of CPU models. CPU models are closely tied to the chipset and memory subsystem. This means that there is less scope for upgrading the CPU than used to be the case.

Question 27

System RAM is normally packaged as…

Answer 27

Dual Inline Memory Modules (DIMMs) fitted to motherboard slots. DIMM slots have catches at either end, are located close to the CPU socket, and are often color-coded.

Question 28

There are various RAM technologies (DDR3 versus DDR4, for instance) and…

Answer 28

the DIMMs are specific to a particular DDR version. A label next to the slots should identify the type of DIMMs supported.

Question 29

What determines how much memory can be fitted?

Answer 29

The capabilities of the memory controller and number of physical slots.

Question 30

The chipset consists of?

Answer 30

several controllers that handle the transfer of data between the CPU and various devices. Examples of controllers include the following:

System memory controller.

Input/Output (I/O) controller to handle disk drives and expansion buses.

Controllers for any integrated video, sound, and network (cabled and wireless) interfaces.

Note: Intel and AMD manufacture all the CPUs used in PCs, but there are various chipset vendors. Some of the major names include ATI (now owned by AMD), NVIDIA, SiS, ULi, and VIA.

Question 31

CMOS stands for?

Answer 31

Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor, which describes the manufacturing process used to make the RAM chip.

Question 32

On current motherboards, configuration data is stored in a?

Answer 32

Non-Volatile RAM (NVRAM) chip such as flash memory, rather than in CMOS RAM. Flash memory does not require battery-backup.

Question 33

A CMOS battery is still used to power the?

Answer 33

Real Time Clock (RTC), however, and may be referred to as the RTC battery or clock battery. The RTC keeps track of the actual date and time.

Question 34

A bus is?

Answer 34

An electrical pathway on the motherboard or through cabling that carries the signals.

Question 35

Physically, a bus is implemented on the motherboard as…

Answer 35

tiny wires (called traces) running between components. The bus carries information being processed by the computer (data) and information about where the data is located in memory (address).

The bus also carries power to a component and the timing signals that synchronize data transfers between components.

Question 36

The term “bus architecture” usually means…

Answer 36

an expansion bus, used to connect peripheral devices. However, a variety of buses exist within a PC. Also, the way that bus designs are implemented has changed considerably as PC technology has developed and improved.

Question 37

An internal bus, or…

Answer 37

local bus, connects core components, such as the CPU, memory, and the system controllers.

Question 38

An external bus, or

Answer 38

expansion bus, allows additional components to be connected to the computer. These components could be peripheral devices (located outside the case) or adapter cards (located inside the case).

Question 39

Some PC case designs are slimline, meaning that there is not enough space for full height expansion cards. This problem is addressed by providing a ?

Answer 39

riser card at right angles to the main board, enabling you to connect additional adapters to the system in an orientation that is parallel to the motherboard and thus save space within the system case.

Note: Another option is to use low profile adapter cards. A low profile card is about half the height of a standard card and so fits within a slimline case.

Question 40

The system clock ?

Answer 40

synchronizes the operation of all parts of the PC and provides the basic timing signal for the CPU. Clock speeds are measured in Megahertz (MHz) or Gigahertz (GHz).

Question 41

The clock consists of…?

Answer 41

a clock generator that sets up a timing signal and clock multipliers that take the timing signal produced by the generator and apply a multiplication factor to produce different timing signals for different types of buses.

This means that one type of bus can work at a different speed (or frequency) to another type of bus.

Question 42

PCI Bus stands for?

Answer 42

Peripheral Component Interconnect Bus

Question 43

PCI supports bus mastering, meaning…

Answer 43

that the device can control the bus to transfer data to and from memory, without requiring the CPU. The PCI architecture is a 32-bit-wide parallel bus working at 33.3 MHz, achieving a transfer rate of up to 133 MBps (that is, 32 bits divided by 8 to get 4 bytes, then multiplied by the clock rate of 33.3).

Question 44

PCIe uses?

Answer 44

point-to-point serial communications, meaning that each component can have a dedicated link to any other component. Connections are made via a switch, which routes data between components and can provide Quality of Service (QoS) to any component that needs it (for example, to prioritize real-time video over non-time critical data).

Question 45

PCI is a…?

Answer 45

parallel interface. Parallel interface speeds are limited by the problem of timing each signal (data skew). They are also more complex and costly to implement. Another performance barrier is the fact that the bandwidth of the PCI bus is shared between all the components connected to it, and only one component can make use of the bus at any one time. This is a particular problem for video, disk access, and networking.

Question 46

Each point-to-point connection is referred to as a??

Answer 46

link

The link sends both data and control/timing instructions.

Question 47

A link can make use of one or more??

Answer 47

lanes. Each lane consists of two wire pairs (four wires in total) using low voltage differential signaling.

Question 48

A storage bus is…

Answer 48

a special type of expansion bus dedicated to communicating with storage devices, such as hard disks, solid state drives, and optical drives (CD/DVD/Blu-ray).

Question 49

Host Bus Adapters (HBAs) provide a…?

Answer 49

connection point for internal mass storage devices, such as hard drives, optical drives, and tape drives.