System Components

Question 1

The FORM FACTOR determines the physical

characteristics of the motherboard including….

Answer 1

Dimensions.
# of expansion slots.
Mounting hole locations.
Back panel dimensions.
Arrangement.
and
Orientation.

Question 2

ATX stands for?

Answer 2

Advanced
Technology
eXtended.

Question 3

BTX or
Balanced
Technology
eXtended

was made because?

Answer 3

Supposedly ATX was bad at getting rid of heat and had poor airflow. BTX was supposed to replace it but never did.

Question 4

Power supplies provide +3.3v
+/- 5v, and +/-12v of DC power.
What are each separate outputs called?

Answer 4

Rails!!

Which most modern power supplies have two or more +12 volt rails.

Question 5

What is soft power?

What does it do?

Answer 5

Soft power ( being able to have power through the motherboard when the computer is OFF)
Allows the computer to be turned on and off by the OS or over the network.

Question 6

4-pin 12 V Pentium 4 (P4) power connector.

Answer 6

Connects to the motherboard.

Provides two dedicated 12V wires to the CPU.

Was the answer to the (P4) processor as the processor required more power than supplied.

Question 7

8-pin EPS12V CPU power

connector.

Answer 7

Originally used with some older dual processor systems.

All modern multi-core processors use this connector.

There are also power supplies two 4-pin connectors (4+4) that are meant to be used side-by-side in the 8-pin plug.

Question 8

6+2-pin PCIe power connector

(Peripheral Component Interconnect express)

Newer cards require more power than can be supplied through the PCI Express bus.
This?

Answer 8

Provides up to 150 watts of additional power to the video card.

Also known as PEG6+2 (PCI Express Graphics 6+2 pin)

Some motherboards have only a 6-pin PCIe connector which provide up to 75 watts.

Question 9

4-pin peripheral power or 4-pin Molex connector.

Answer 9

Is used by legacy components.

The connector provides both 5v (red) and 12v (yellow)

Each power supply cable typically has multiple 4-pin connectors on the same cable.

Try to balance the devices connected to each cable when connecting devices.

Question 10

SATA power connector

Answer 10

Has 15 pins and provides 3.3, 5, and 12 volts.

Can use a special adapter to convert a 4-pin Molex connector to a SATA connector.

Some adapters only supply 5 and 12 V.

Question 11

4-pin mini-Molex

Answer 11

Provides 5 and 12 volts and is used by floppy drives.

Question 12

Unified
Extensible
Firmware
Interface

Answer 12

The UEFI provides better security

The UEFI provides faster startup times.

The UEFI supports drives larger than 2.2 terabytes.

The UEFI supports 64-bit firmware device drivers.

Question 13

The CHIPSET is a group of chips that facilitates communication between the processor, memory, and peripheral devices.

with chipsets…

Answer 13

The memory and the graphics controllers are on the CPU

Intel processors use the Platform Controller Hub (PCH)
AMD use Fusion Controller Hub

The frontside bus is replaced by the Direct Media Interface (DMI)

Question 14

What is a Die?

Answer 14

The die or processor die is a rectangular pattern on a wafer containing circuitry to perform a specific function.

Question 15

What is a Codec?

Answer 15

A codec is a device for coding and decoding audio/ video files.

Question 16

What is the difference between Multithreading and Hyper-threading?

Answer 16

Hyper-threading is a feature of some Intel processors that allows a single processor to run threads (instructions) in parallel, as opposed to processing threads linearly. Hyper-threading enables a processor to execute two threads at the same time.

Hyper-threading is hardware and Multithreading is Application software.

Question 17

Why use throttling?

Answer 17

(Mobile devices)
To minimize power consumption and heat output for mobile processors.

To slow down the processing of I/O memory requests for one sequence at a time for low memory conditions.

To shut down unused cores in mulit-core systems to SAVE ENERGY

Question 18

What is Virtualization?

Answer 18

Virtualization is the ability to install and run multiple operating systems simultaneously on a single physical machine. (A computer within a computer)
A hypervisor.

Question 19

What is Cache?

Answer 19

Is memory that the processor can access directly without using the system RAM.

Question 20

What is processing size?

Answer 20

The manufacturing process used to etch transistors onto the silicon wafer that will become the CPU.

A smaller process size means /smaller transistors/ which translates into a smaller CPU die with /more/ transistors and less power consumption.

Question 21

Throttling is..?

Answer 21

Is the process of modifying the operating characteristics of a processor based on current conditions.

Question 22

What is the biggest limitation of using a 32-bit processor?

Answer 22

32-bit processors have a limit of 4GB of memory.

Question 23

What is the difference between SODIMM and UniDIMM?

What do they stand for?

Answer 23

SODIMM or (small outline dual in-line memory module) is a smaller DIMM used in laptops and notebook computers.
Used by SDRAM, DDR and DDR2 memory.
Has a higher pin density.

UniDIMM (Universal Dual In-line Memory Module ) Is a design specification used to carry DRAM chips.
Can be populated with either DDR3 or DDR4 chips.
Allows mobile platform users to use both DDR3 and DDR4.

Question 24

What is SDRAM?

Answer 24

SDRAM or (synchronous dynamic random access memory)
Is synchronized with the clock speed that the microprocessor is optimized for. Which usually increases the number of instructions that the processor can perform in a given time.
Speed is rated in MHz rather than ns.

Question 25

DDR is?

Answer 25

Double Data Rate.
All variations of DDR are synchronized (variations of the original SDRAM) with the system clock and accept 64-bit words.

DDR accepts a single command and two following data sets per bus cycle.

Operating at the same frequency, DDR has twice the bandwidth of SDRAM.

OPERATES AT 2.5V at bus frequencies between 100-200 MHz

Has single notch with 184 pins.

Question 26

Static RAM

Answer 26

Stores data using four transistors for every bit of data and doesn’t require constant power to maintain the contents of memory because it uses capacitors.

Is more complex and less dense than DRAM.

Able to maintain memory contents when the power is turned off.

SRAM is typically used in cache memory such as CPU cache, hard disk cache and cache in networking devices.

Question 27

What is DRAM (Dynamic RAM)?

Answer 27

DRAM stores data using a single transistor for every bit of data ( 1 or 0 ) To keep the transistor storing the same bit of data, it must have continuous power. When the power is turned off the data is lost.

DRAM can have a very high density (storage).
Relatively inexpensive.
DRAM is used in the main system memory on a computer.

Question 28

What is intermittent?

Answer 28

Unreliable, occurs on and off.

Question 29

What is Frequency?

Answer 29

The rate at which something repeats.

Question 30

What is Hertz?

Answer 30

Cycles per second.

Question 31

What is EEPROM?

Answer 31

Non-volatile memory used to store relatively small amounts of data.

Individual bytes are able to be erased and reprogrammed.

Allow you to update the BIOS/UEFI in your computer without having to open the computer and remove any chips.

Question 32

What is ECC?

Answer 32

Error Correcting Code
is
used for its ability to detect and correct memory errors automatically.

It uses an odd number of chips where the odd one is used to help check if the code is correct.

Used for important things such as servers or banks where the information or data can’t be wrong.

Question 33

What’s SLI (Scalable Link Interface) and CrossFire?

Answer 33

SLI allows two, three, or four GPUs to share the workload when rendering real-time 3D computer or processing graphics in general.

Question 34

How does sampling work?

Answer 34

When a computer digitizes an analog signal, it breaks down the wave into discrete chunks called samples.

A sample is a value you use to identify the amplitude and frequency of the wave at a point in time.

Doing this at specific intervals along the entire analog wave it creates an approximation of what the analog wave looks like but in digital format.

So basically, you speak into a recording device that uses your analog audio, the recording device uses electronic sensors to digitize the audio into parts that are samples.

The higher the sampling rate the more accurate ( HQ ) the sound is.

Question 35

DirectX/OpenGL?

Answer 35

A collection of APIs ( Application Program Interfaces)

That improves graphics, animation, and multimedia creations.

Question 36

What is HDCP(High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection)?

Answer 36

HDCP is a method for protecting digital media.

Its purpose is to prevent the interception and copying of protected data streams as they are sent from a playback device to a display device.

It’s encryption.

Question 37

ADC?

Answer 37

Analog to Digital Converter.

Converts analog sound into digital data.

Question 38

DSP?

Answer 38

Digital Signal Processor.

an onboard processor that handles analog and digital conversion.

Question 39

DAC?

Answer 39

Digital to Analog Converter.

Converts digital data into analog sound. ( usually played on speakers).

Question 40

What’s a 5.1 and 7.1 Dolby audio channel?

Answer 40

5.1 Also known as surround sound, has 6 audio channels.
//5 speakers and 1 low frequency effects subwoofer (LFE) channel.

7.1 has 8 audio channels.
7 speakers and 1 LFE subwoofer.

They both have front, and back, L,R speakers on the front and back and one subwoofer.
The only difference is that 7.1 has two transitional audio speakers in between the front and L, and R speakers.

Question 41

Sampling rate for telephones?

CDs?

DVD audio?

LPCM (Linear Pulse Code Modulation)?

BD-ROM?

Answer 41

8 kHz

44kHz

96 kHz

192 kHz

Question 42

TOSLINK?

Answer 42

Toshiba Link fiber optic cable connector is another form of S/PDIF

Question 43

What advantage does a PCIe bus have over a PCI bus?

Answer 43

A PCIe is full duplex, meaning it can send and receive data through two fixed points at the same time.

Where PCI is only half duplex.