3.0 Hardware - A+ 1101 Flashcards

Question

36. What type of front-panel or top-panel connector uses a standard 3.5 mm jack to make connections? A. USB B. Audio C. FireWire D. Thunderbolt

Answer 1

36. B. The audio connector on the front-panel or top-panel will use a round, 3.5 mm connector. You can plug speakers or a headset with a boom microphone into it.

Answer 2

37. C, D. With most dual-channel motherboards, RAM will work just fine if one module is installed. However, you will get better performance if you fill the entire bank. If there is only one RAM module installed in one channel, then you can’t possibly take advantage of the dual-channel architecture.

Answer 3

38. D. There are five major versions of PCIe currently specified: 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0. Each version doubles the data transfer rate of the version before. For the four versions, a single bidirectional lane operates at a data rate of 250 MBps, 500 MBps, approximately 1 GBps, roughly 2 GBps, and nearly 4 GBps respectively. In any version of PCIe, there can be up to 16 lanes, so for example, in theory, a PCIe 4.0 x16 connector could transfer nearly 32 GB/s (1.969 GB/s per lane, x 16 lanes). You might find it helpful in your studies to locate or create a chart of the different versions and bandwidth for x1, x4, x8 and x16.

Answer 4

40. A, B. Faster hard drives transfer more data than slower hard drives, but there is no specific correlation between hard drive speed and its life span. The downsides to faster hard drives can be increased battery usage and heat production.

Answer 5

44. B, C. Liquid cooling systems are generally quieter than air-based systems that use fans, and they are more efficient at cooling the processor. However, they are more complex to install, and if the liquid were to leak out, it could cause damage to internal components.

Answer 6

42. C. Print servers need to have the appropriate drivers for all operating systems that will be clients. It’s possible that this print server does not have the macOS driver installed.

Answer 7

45. C, D. Impact printers create images by physically striking the paper, which can wear down the printhead. Always check that. Also, impact printers most often use tractor-feed mechanisms to load the paper, and they can wear down or get bogged down by paper debris as well.

Answer 8

46. C. PCIe uses lanes. Each lane between any two intercommunicating devices consists of a separate pair of wires, one for each direction of traffic, which dramatically increases speed.

Answer 9

47. B. Of the liquid crystal display (LCD) choices given, IPS have the better viewing angle. LCDs can be twisted nematic (TN), in-plane switching (IPS), or vertical alignment (VA). VA has a greater contrast ratio, but it has a narrower viewing angle than IPS. TN is legacy technology. LED refers to a type of backlighting, and plasma displays are not a type of LCD.

Answer 10

48. B, C. A home server PC should be able to handle media streaming as well as file and printer sharing. A dedicated print server is not likely needed, though, as the operating system can function as a print server. A gigabit NIC will be helpful to manage the network traffic, and a RAID -1 or RAID 5 array can help recover from hard drive failure.

Answer 11

49. B. The x8 card won’t completely fill the x16 slot, but it will work at x8 speeds if up-plugging is supported by the motherboard. Otherwise, the specification requires up-plugged devices to operate at only the x1 rate

Answer 12

51. A. DDR3 DIMMs have 240 pins. DDR4 and DDR5 DIMMs have 288 pins, but they are not interchangeable and have notches (module keys) in different locations to prevent installing the incorrect modules into a motherboard. SODIMMs are laptop RAM, not desktop RAM.

Answer 13

50. B. Secure Boot is an option enabled in system firmware. BIOS is not technically advanced enough to manage Secure Boot, but its successor UEFI is. AMI (American Megatrends) is a BIOS manufacturer, and SATA is a type of hard drive technology.

Answer 14

52. A. The module key, also called a notch, on a DDR5 DIMM is at the center of the module whereas the DDR4 DIMM is slightly off center. Both are sold with heat sinks attached and come in multiple colors. Physically, they’re the same size.

Answer 15

53. D. Multithreading is a feature of processors that divides physical processor cores into logical cores, and software processes into multiple threads that can be run concurrently on those logical cores. As a result, the operating system can schedule two processes at the same time on each physical core. Intel’s implementation of multithreading is called hyperthreading

Answer 16

54. A. An impact printer typically requires paper that always feeds at a consistent rate. To achieve this, the paper will have holes on the outside edges, which is fed into the printer using a tractor-feed mechanism. Thermal printers use special paper and heat to create images, whereas laser printers use the electrophotographic process. Inkjet printers spray drops of ink onto paper.

Answer 17

55. A. ATX motherboards are common in desktop computers and measure 12″ × 9.6″. They are the largest motherboards commonly used in personal computers today.

Answer 18

56. D. The motor that makes the printhead carriage move is also often called the carriage motor or carriage stepper motor. It has a belt attached to it, the carriage belt, which moves the printhead carriage back and forth.

Answer 19

58. C. The most common analog video connector is a VGA connector. It is usually blue in color, arranged in a D shape with 15 pins arranged in 3 rows.

Answer 20

57. A, C, D. The CPU must support VM Display Mode Extension; on an Intel processor, it’s called Virtualization Technology (Intel VT). The processor must be 64-bit and have secondlevel address translation (SLAT). Virtualization also requires the Windows Pro edition or better. Virtualization must be enabled in the BIOS/UEFI and may be found under different names depending on the motherboard manufacturer

Answer 21

59. A. Thunderbolt v1 and v2 both provide 20 Gbps of data bandwidth. Thunderbolt 3 doubles the data rate to 40 Gbps. Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 can also provide the power the device needs. USB 3.0 can only provide about 5 W of power and is much slower at 5 Gbps. eSATA is also slower and doesn’t provide power, although eSATAp does. DisplayPort is also slower and provides no power, unless it’s DisplayPort over USB.

Answer 22

61. B, C. PCI slots and adapters are manufactured in 3.3 V and 5 V versions. Adapters are keyed to fit in a slot based on their voltage requirements. Universal adapters are keyed to fit in slots based on either of the two voltages. PCI has largely been replaced by PCIe, but there are still implementations of it, and it is still on the CompTIA A+ exam objectives.

Answer 23

60. C. The order of steps is processing, charging, exposing, developing, transferring, fusing, and cleaning

Answer 24

62. A. Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is an international standard for a dedicated security coprocessor, or cryptoprocessor. Coupled with a BIOS/UEFI, it can be configured to boot the system only after authenticating the boot device. LoJack is a feature for locating stolen or missing devices, Secure Boot is designed to prevent malicious software from loading before a PC boots, and BitLocker is a feature of Windows Pro and higher editions that is used to encrypt entire storage drives.

Answer 25

63. A. The transfer corona assembly is given a positive charge, which is transferred to the paper, which in turn pulls the negatively charged toner from the photosensitive imaging drum. This is the transferring phase of the laser printer imaging process.

Answer 26

66. B. The high-voltage power supply (HVPS) provides the high voltages used by both the charging corona and the transfer corona during the laser printer imaging process. The printer will likely have a second power supply that provides power to the circuit boards. Caution needs to be observed when working inside any laser printer because of the danger inherent in the two power supplies.

Answer 27

67. C. RAID-10 (also known as RAID-1+0) provides fault tolerance to RAID-0 through the RAID-1 mirroring of each disk in the RAID-0 striped set. It requires a minimum of four hard disks.

Answer 28

69. C. To use a second display on a desktop computer, you need to install a second video adapter or have one video adapter with two display interfaces. Laptops often have an external display interface and are capable of providing video to the built-in screen and an external display at the same time

Answer 29

70. A. DDR3 and DDR4 memory slots are both keyed, but the keys are in different places. DDR3 has 240 pins and DDR4 has 288 pins. Therefore, the memory will not fit into the slots on the motherboard.

Answer 30

71. C. During the transferring step, the positively charged paper pulls the negatively charged toner from the photosensitive drum at the line of contact between the roller and the paper

Answer 31

72. A. Duplexing is printing on the front and back. Other common options or settings include orientation (portrait or landscape), collating (printing pages in sets such as 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3) and print quality (such as draft or high resolution).

Answer 32

73. C. A Blu-ray Disc Extra Large (BDXL) can store up to 128 GB of data, (Quad BDXL) although most for sale boast only 100 GB of storage (Triple BDXL). Blu-ray is the latest rendition of optical disks, but DVDs are still available, and come in single layer (SL), dual layer (DL), single side (SS) and dual side (DS) formats. DVD-18 (DS, DL) hold approximately 16 GB of data. DVD-10 (DS, SL) can hold approximately 9GB, and DVD-9 (SS, DL) hold approximately 8 GB of storage. DVD-9 and DVD-10 can both be DVD+R or DVD-R format but DVD-18 can only be the DVD+R format.

Answer 33

74. C. Inkjet printers typically use a reservoir of ink (also known as an ink cartridge), a pump, and a nozzle to print images. Empty cartridges need to be replaced.

Answer 34

75. D. The number designation of 3600 in DDR4 3600 indicates bus speed of 3,600 MHz. To find the throughput, multiply the bus speed by 8. DDR4 3600 therefore is the same as PC4 28,800 with a peak transfer rate of 28,800 Mbps. (3,600,000 cycles per second x 8 = 28,800,000 bits per second. Divide by 1000 to get Mbps = 28,800).

Answer 35

76. C. Multiply the 5200 bus speed by 8 to get the bits per second that can be transferred in and out of the RAM module. The PC5 designation means that it is DDR5, and the 41,600 means that it can (theoretically) transfer 41,600 Mbps (megabits per second).

Answer 36

77. B. iPads and iPhones can automatically detect AirPrint-enabled printers on their local network and print to them without requiring the installation of a driver. Bonjour is a service that works with both Macs and Windows devices but requires some configuration. TCP printing uses an IP Address to connect to a printer. Virtual printing sends the output to something else such as a .pdf file.

Answer 37

78. B. To communicate with other computers on a network, you need a network interface card (NIC). A wireless access point (WAP) is a wireless hub that many wireless devices communicate with, and WPA is a wireless security standard. A KVM switch allows you to have multiple systems attached to the same keyboard, video, and mouse. Other types of expansion cards (that could use the same slot as a NIC) include but are not limited to video cards, sound cards, storage cards, TV tuner cards, and riser cards.

Answer 38

79. B. The printer driver uses a page description language (PDL) to convert the data being printed into the format that the printer can understand. The driver also ensures that the printer is ready to print. PDL stands for page description language, which specifies the printed page layout. The print queue holds print jobs that are waiting to be printed, the print spooler manages the printing process, including locating the right printer driver.

Answer 39

80. C. Windows comes with many drivers for different devices, but if the manufacturer has provided a specific printer driver, it’s often best to install that printer driver first, then connect the device. In this case, the user will be printing mostly graphics, so the PostScript driver will provide better printing for them. PostScript drivers are not dependent on the hardware, so the printed graphic will look the same regardless of what device it is printed on.

Answer 40

81. B. Printer Control Language (PCL) drivers depend on the printer hardware to create some of the effects such as filling in areas and making underlines. The PC releases the print job to the printer to finish, making the PC and application available to the user more quickly.

Answer 41

82. D. The power supply fan is used to cool the power supply and the inside of the computer case. This fan draws air from inside the case into vents in the power supply. This pulls hot air through the power supply so that it can be blown out of the case, which also causes cooler air to be drawn in through vents in the case.

Answer 42

84. C. USB 3.0 supports 5 Gbps, USB 1.0 supports 12 Mbps, USB 2.0 supports 480 Mbps, and USB 3.1 Gen 2 supports 10 Gbps.

Answer 43

85. C. With RAID 10, drives are set up as mirrors, then those mirrors are striped. A minimum of two drives are needed to create a mirror, then another two to stripe the data for a total of four drives. The computer already has one drive in it. That drive would be mirrored, then striped, so three more drives are needed. RAID 10 provides both extra speed and fault tolerance.

Answer 44

86. A. RAID-0 uses a minimum of two drives, writing different bits of data to each drive at the same time to improve speed, but it doesn’t offer any fault tolerance. RAID-1 is disk mirroring, which provides some fault tolerance but no speed improvement. RAID-5 and RAID-10 improve both speed and fault tolerance.

Answer 45

87. A. A processor that exhibits a multicore architecture has multiple completely separate processor dies in the same package. The operating system and applications see multiple processors in the same way that they see multiple processors in separate sockets. 64-bit refers to the width of the data bus. An integrated GPU means that the graphics processor is also on the CPU package, and multiprocessor refers to more than one physical socket on a motherboard.

Answer 46

88. B. All are digital video disk (DVD) technologies. A single-sided, single-layer (SS, SL) DVD provides about 4.7 GB of storage. A dual-sided (DS) disk will double that capacity to 9.4 GB. Adding a second layer, or dual-layer (DL), adds more capacity, but the technology does not double the capacity of a single layer. A single-sided, dual-layer (SS, DL) disk has a capacity of about 8.5 GB. There is no DVD-R SS, TL, but a DVD+R DS, DL holds nearly 17 GB of data. The -R refers to the encoding scheme. There is also a + R format. There are also number designations to identify how many sides and layers a DVD has. DVD-9 is single side, dual layer, DVD-10 is dual side, single layer, DVD-18 is dual side, dual layer.

Answer 47

89. D. Many power supplies have a two-position slider switch called a dual voltage switch. It can be set for 110–120 V or 220–240 V, depending on what local power specifications are.

Answer 48

90. D. Mobile-ITX motherboards are 2.4″ square, MicroATX motherboards are 9.6″ square, mini-ITX motherboards are 6.7″ square, and Pico-ITX motherboards are 3.9″ × 2.8″.

Answer 49

91. C. Dot-matrix printers use printheads that strike an ink ribbon, which presses up against the paper to make an image. Therefore, they are impact printers. Laser printers use a photosensitive drum to create the image, inkjet printers use an ink reservoir (cartridge) and spray nozzles to produce an image on paper using dots of ink, and thermal printers use heat to produce an image on special heat-sensitive paper.

Answer 50

92. A, B. Sockets that support Intel processors are currently named starting with the letters LGA, such as LGA1700 and LGA2066. Socket names that start with AM or FM will support AMD processors and not Intel processors

Answer 51

93. B. A solid-state drive (SSD) will provide them with the highest capacity of the four options and also give them immediate access. Network attached storage (NAS) speaks to its connection and availability, not capacity. If the client required file sharing as well, then using a NAS would be the proper choice. Secure Digital (SD) is a memory card format and does not offer the capacity or immediacy they need. BD-R is a Blu-ray disk format. It has good storage capabilities, but not the immediacy for editing.

Answer 52

94. B, C. Digital displays will have a digital interface, such as DVI-D, HDMI, or mini-HDMI. Composite connectors are rarely used on displays, and VGA is analog, not digital.

Answer 53

95. A, B, D. The four virtual printing options are print to file, print to PDF, print to XPS, and print to image.

Answer 54

96. C. There are five major versions of PCIe currently specified: 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 4.0, and 5.0. For the five versions, a single bidirectional lane operates at a data rate of 250 MBps, 500 MBps, approximately 1 GBps, roughly 2 GBps, and nearly 4 GBps, respectively. Each PCIe slot can have up to 16 lanes, the number of lanes being indicated by x1, x4, x8, x16. (The x is pronounced as by.) Therefore, a PCIe 3 x1 slot can support up to 1 GBps of bandwidth.

Answer 55

97. D. Laser printers incorporate a fuser assembly, which uses two rollers that apply pressure and heat to fuse the plastic toner particles to the paper.

Answer 56

98. A. During the charging step, the charging corona uses a high voltage to apply a strong, uniform negative charge (around –600 VDC) to the surface of the imaging drum.

Answer 57

99. A. When installing dual-channel RAM, be sure that the RAM modules both have the same parameters. In some cases, you might even need to make sure they come from the same manufacturer. RAM for channeled motherboards is often sold in packs such as a pack of two RAM modules for dual-channel motherboards, three modules for triple-channel motherboards, and four modules for quad-channel motherboards.

Answer 58

100. D. Carriage motors are components in inkjet printers. Laser printer components include a fuser assembly, imaging drum, transfer belt, transfer roller, pickup roller, separation pads, and a duplexing assembly.

Answer 59

101. A. A laser printer uses various high-voltage biases inside the case, and high voltages can create harmful ozone.

Answer 60

102. D. The purpose of a KVM switch is to allow you to have multiple systems attached to the same keyboard, video display, and mouse. You can use these three devices with only one system at a time, and the KVM switch will have a dial or buttons to allow you to switch between systems.

Answer 61

103. B. To get this printer off of the original user’s desk, it probably needs to be its own print server. Installing an integrated (or stand-alone) print server with a network connection should work well in this situation. Installing a network card wouldn’t take care of the sharing aspect of the problem. You need a network connection before you can use TCP/ IP settings to connect to it. AirPrint is Apple’s wireless printing, which would also need to have the printer connected to a wireless network.

Answer 62

105. D. During the developing step, toner is attracted to areas of the drum where an image has been written by the laser. Those areas have a slight negative charge (–100 VDC) as opposed to unexposed areas of the drum and the developing roller (to which the toner is stuck), which each have a charge of –600 VDC.

Answer 63

104. B. Clean pickup rollers (and other rubber rollers) with mild soap and water and not alcohol. Alcohol can dry out the rollers, making them brittle and ineffective. A dry cloth will not remove the dirt or debris, and compressed air would just blow the debris into other internal printer components.

Answer 64

106. C. The primary factor in determining data throughput for a magnetic hard drive is the spin rate, which is measured in revolutions per minute (rpm). Higher spin rates will result in faster data reads and writes and increase data throughput.

Answer 65

118. D. An automatic document feeder (ADF) is a device that sits on top of a flatbed scanner. It is used to pull a stack of papers through and scan them one at a time without user intervention. Some MFDs will scan the front and back of the paper at the same time.

Answer 66

108. C. To make information available to the rest of the computer more quickly, hard drive manufacturers increase the speed at which the hard drive platters spin, which is measured in revolutions per minute (rpm). The downside of higher speed is usually more heat generated by the drive, so faster hard drives may require additional cooling in the case.

Answer 67

109. A, B, C. The ATX, MicroATX, and mini-ITX motherboard form factors can all be mounted inside a standard ATX case. The mini-ITX will have only three of the four mounting holes line up with the case, but the rear interfaces are placed in the same location as those on ATX motherboards.

Answer 68

110. C. If memory supports ECC, check bits are generated and stored with the data. If one of the eight memory bits is in error, ECC can correct the error. ECC tends to be more expensive than non-ECC memory, so it is more often found in servers than in workstations.

Answer 69

111. A, D. USB flash drives and SD cards are hot swappable. (In the case of USB, be sure that the flash drive does not contain key file system files needed for the computer to run!) Hybrid SSDs might or might not be hot swappable and are larger than USB and SD drives. PATA devices are legacy technology and not hot swappable

Answer 70

113. B, D. Dual-channel motherboards have two banks of two RAM slots. They are usually color-coded such that the two slots of the same color belong to different channels. For best performance, a RAM module needs to be installed into each channel, so two can be accessed at a time. It’s always best to refer to the motherboard manual for proper RAM placement. Some motherboards will revert to single-channel mode if, for example, three RAM modules were placed in a dual-channel motherboard with four slots. Channels are typically marked with letters.

Answer 71

114. A. The boot sequence of a computer is changed in the BIOS/UEFI settings.

Answer 72

116. A. The USB 3.0 standard doesn’t specify a cable length limitation, but it does recommend a cable length of 3 meters or less. USB 2.0 cables can be up to 5 meters in length. USB4 cables should be only 0.8 meters. The manager will need a USB hub, and to extend the distance the manager could purchase active USB cables, some of which have an external power supply or extra USB A connector for extra power, or a Cat 5/Cat 6 USB extender.

Answer 73

117. C. Depending on the printer, you may be able to update the printer’s information in Devices and Printers; otherwise, a firmware update may be needed. Firmware upgrades can offer newer features that are not available on previous versions.

Answer 74

119. D. PCI is a shared-bus topology, so mixing 33 MHz and 66 MHz adapters in a 66 MHz system will slow all adapters to 33 MHz.

Answer 75

120. B. In the exposing step, the image is written to the photosensitive imaging drum. Wherever the laser beam touches, the photosensitive drum’s charge is severely reduced from –600 VDC to a slight negative charge (around –100 VDC). As the drum rotates, a pattern of exposed areas is formed, representing the image to be printed.

Answer 76

121. D. Passive cooling systems come in a variety of models, and some are very effective. The defining characteristic is that they do not use a fan or require a power source. Their advantage is that they are the ultimate in cooling system quiet because there is no fan or pump running.

Answer 77

122. A, C, D. The UEFI configures many hardware components and settings, such as system date and time, boot sequence, enabling and disabling devices, clock speeds, virtualization support, fans, and UEFI/Boot security.

Answer 78

123. A. The typical increasing order of capacity and distance from the processor die is L1 cache, L2 cache, L3 cache, RAM, and HDD/SSD. The closest caches are located on the processor die.

Answer 79

125. A, D. A pin grid array (PGA) socket has holes to receive the pins that are on the CPU. The land grid array (LGA) is a newer technology that places the delicate pins on the motherboard instead of on the CPU.

Answer 80

126. C. A duplexing assembly is used for two-sided printing. After the first page is printed, it’s fed into the duplexing assembly, turned over, and fed back into the paper feed assembly

Answer 81

127. A, C. The DC power supply (DCPS), also sometimes called the low voltage power supply (LVPS), provides power for the logic boards and motors, whereas the high voltage power supply (HVPS) provides higher voltages for the toner transfer process. The printer’s logic circuitry and motors require low voltages, between +5 VDC and +24 VDC. The DC power supply (DCPS) converts house current into three voltages: +5 VDC and –5 VDC for the logic circuitry and +24 VDC for the paper-transport motors. This component also runs the fan that cools the internal components of the printer

Answer 82

129. D. Never ship a printer anywhere with a toner cartridge installed! The jostling that happens during shipping could cause toner to spill out of the cartridge and all over the inside of the printer, and a toner spill is difficult to clean up. Remove the toner cartridge first. You can put it in a sealed, airtight bag to ship if needed.

Answer 83

131. D. The order of steps is processing, charging, exposing, developing, transferring, fusing, and cleaning.

Answer 84

134. C. Thermal printers use a heating element. It heats up spots on special waxy, heat-sensitive paper to form the image

Answer 85

135. A. When a laser printer requests maintenance, it’s because it has reached a certain page count. Apply a proper maintenance kit (one recommended by the manufacturer) and then clear the service message.

Answer 86

139. A. Cable television installations typically use RG-6 but may also use RG-59 cable. RG-6 is slightly thicker, can run longer distances, and supports digital signals. RG-59 is suited only for analog TV signals and is used for some security cameras.

Answer 87

140. D. RG-6 is a better choice because it supports digital signals and has a longer range (304 meters, or 1,000 feet). RG-59 can run up to 228 meters (750 feet). Both have impedance of 75 ohms, and both use BNC connectors or F-type connectors. RG-6 is usually better insulated and will have less signal loss. While the RG-59 might work, if it doesn’t, would you want to do the job over?

Answer 88

141. A, D. Multimode fiber (MMF) and unshielded twisted pair (UTP) Cat 6 and newer support 10 Gbps transmission speeds. Cat 5 supports up to 100 Mbps, and Cat 5e supports up to 1,000 Mbps.

Answer 89

146. A. Cat 5 UTP can transmit data at speeds up to 100 Mbps, for a distance of 100 meters. Cat 5e is capable of 1 Gbps. Cat 6 and newer can support 10 Gbps. Single mode is a type of fiber-optic cable and is very fast.

Answer 90

147. A. Most network cables are coated with a plastic PVC coating, which produces toxic gas when burned. Plenum-rated cables are coated with a Teflon-like material that is not poisonous when burned.

Answer 91

148. C. The 16-bit SCSI drives were connected by a Molex type connector, two rows of pins, totaling 68 pins.

Answer 92

151. A. Thunderbolt 3 cables work as USB-C cables and are fully compatible. Thunderbolt 3 are capable of transferring at 40 Gbps, but USB 3.1 (on USB-C) can only reach 10 Gbps. USB4 is able to reach 40 Gbps.

Answer 93

154. D. Triple channel memory is achieved when three matching memory modules are installed, permitting data to be spread and memory accessed simultaneously. The effect is lower memory latency, triple the access speed (compared to single channel), and triple the 64-bit communication path.

Answer 94

155. D. M.2 is a solid-state hard drive form factor, measuring 22 mm wide. Its lengths vary between 30 mm, 42 mm, 60 mm, 80 mm, and 120 mm. NVMe is a storage protocol, not a form factor. Many M.2 drives use the NVMe protocol. SATA and PCIe are bus interface standards found on a motherboard.

Answer 95

156. C. Solid-state drives (SSDs) come in multiple form factors, such as a “stick” resembling a memory module (M.2) or a 2.5″ box housed in metal. SSDs also come in 3.5″ form factor. M.2 and mSATA are form factors for SSDs. NVMe is a protocol for storing data that is commonly used with M.2 drives, although M.2 drives can also use the older Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI).

Answer 96

157. B. eSATA is external SATA, a type of connector for external SATA drives. Nonvolatile Memory Express (NVMe) is a protocol and communications interface designed to connect small SSD storage to the PCIe bus of a motherboard. The Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) technology preceded NVMe, and was much slower. M.2 and mSATA are form factors for SSDs that connect directly to a motherboard. An mSATA drive looks similar to M.2, but the connectors are slightly different and mSATA only connects to the slower SATA bus using AHCI technology. M.2 drives can be either NVMe or AHCI, so checking documentation is important.

Answer 97

159. A. Thermal paste is like a grease that ensures that the heat generated from the CPU is efficiently conducted away and into the heat sink. New coolers (fan/heat sink combinations) often come with thermal pads (paste) preinstalled. Lowering the CPU speed might result in less heat generated, but it would obviously also result in degraded performance.

Answer 98

164. A. There are several types of 3D printers. Material extrusion printers work by pushing material through a nozzle as the nozzle and possibly a print bed move to place the material. The materials used are as diverse as plastic, metal, and human tissue. Vat polymerization 3D printers use a light source to harden resin in a vat. When the liquid is drained away, the hardened product remains. Powder bed fusion types deposit one thin layer of material at a time that is hardened where needed. Each of these has subtypes, and this is not an exhaustive list of the types of 3D printers.

Answer 99

165. C. Extrusion type 3D printers heat material called filament from a roll and force it through a narrow nozzle while the nozzle is moved to the appropriate spot to build an object layer by layer. Filament is available in different thickness and characteristics, so it’s important to verify exactly what type of filament the printer uses before ordering it.

Answer 100

166. D. Cat 6 and newer can support 10 Gbps, but Cat 6 can only go 55 meters at 10 Gbps. To go 100 meters you’ll need Cat 6a. Cat 5e’s top speed is 1 Gbps, and Cat 5 is only 100 Mbps.

Answer 101

167. A. Category 6 cable will work for the implementation described. It is capable of 10 Gbps but only for a distance of 55 meters. Category 6a can go 100 meters at 10 Gbps. Cat 7 is not an IEEE standard, nor is it approved by TIA/EIA, and it doesn’t use a standard RJ45 connector. Cat 8 is IEEE approved; it can support 10 Gbps over 100 meters and can support 40 GBps, but only over very short distances (24 meters), which makes it good for things like a storage area network (SAN). Cat 7 and Cat 8 are not on the CompTIA A+ objectives this time, so don’t spend too much time on them right now.

Answer 102

168. B. Direct burial cable is made to go underground without any kind of conduit around it. The coating is made to be waterproof and block moisture vapor as well. A good cable will also protect against degradation from sunlight.

Answer 103

170. D. Only fiber-optic cables use pulses of light to transmit data. The other three listed are types of copper cable that use electrical charges to transmit data signals

Answer 104

171. B. Data transmissions can be parallel, meaning multiple bits at the same time in parallel with each other, or they can be serial, meaning only one bit at a time. It would seem that parallel transmissions should be faster, but they aren’t. In fact, modern peripheral and hard drive cables all send data in series.

Answer 105

174. D. Typically in a motherboard with multichannel support, the channels will be labeled with a letter (A, B, C, D). To take advantage of the multichannel capabilities, you would install one RAM module in each channel. Lowest numbered slots are usually filled first, so you would use slot 1 (or zero, if numbering started there) of each channel. You should, of course, always consult the motherboard documentation.

Answer 106

175. A. A part of the hard disk drive (or SDD) being used as if it was RAM is known as virtual memory. Virtual memory works by moving a chunk of information, called a page, to a file named pagefile.sys. pagefile.sys is literally the file on the hard drive where information in virtual memory is stored. Because of this, virtual memory is sometimes called the page file or paging file. It isn’t as fast to access as actual RAM, but it will allow some programs to run that wouldn’t otherwise. DIMMs and SODIMMs and Cache are types of physical memory. DIMMs are used in desktop computers, SODIMMs are used in laptops, and cache resides on the processor die.

Answer 107

177. C. Molex connectors have a metal sleeve inside a plastic housing. Technically they can come in any number of connections but those used most often in computer systems are 4 pin, 6 pin, 8 pin, and 20/24 pin. They are used to provide power to various devices and the motherboard.

Answer 108

178. A, B. In many extruder type 3D printers, the print bed will move down as the print job progresses and may move front to back during the printing of each layer, while the extruder nozzle moves left to right, building the 3D object one layer at a time.

Answer 109

180. D. NVMe and SSD drives don’t have platters that spin. Blu-ray optical discs spin, but their spin speed is not how they are measured. Only magnetic drives are measured in rpms, and 15,000 would be a very fast magnetic drive.

Answer 110

181. B. SSDs and magnetic drives can both be found in the 3.5″ form factor that is used in desktop computers, and often they connect via a SATA interface. mSATA and M.2 are solid-state drives consisting of a very small circuit board that connects directly to the motherboard via a slot with a screw or connector to hold it in place.

Answer 111

182. B, D. M.2 drives are keyed with B or M or B+M keys. A and E keys are for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or cellular devices such as networking cards found in laptops. In computers, a key is a device such as a notch, an indent on a circuit board, that ensures you can’t plug the wrong type of device into something. Power connectors are keyed by shape, RAM modules are keyed with notches in different places, CPUs will have keys, SATA connectors have an L shape for a key, and M.2 drives are keyed as well. In an M.2, a B key is for PCIe x 2/SATA/ USB and so on, and an M key is PCIe x4/SATA.

Answer 112

183. C. SATA 3 had a speed of 6 Gbps and a data throughput of 600 MBps, but SATA 3.2 (also called SATAe) ties compatible drives into the PCIe bus on the motherboard, decreasing overhead and taking advantage of the PCIe bus speeds which makes the data throughput multiple times better.

Answer 113

184. A, C. Socket AM4 and Socket TR4 are only compatible with AMD processors. The two LGA sockets listed are for use with Intel processors only.

Answer 114

186. D. This is a multisocket motherboard, meaning that it has sockets for more than one processor. The other three terms describe characteristics of processors. Multicore is more than one core on a die. Multithreaded means each core can perform more than one string of code at a time, and a coprocessor is usually a chip designed to perform a specific function to help a processor be more efficient.

Answer 115

187. A. Servers often perform more work than any other computer on a network, especially in a virtualization environment. A server could be as simple as an ordinary desktop computer, but more often the server will have extra processing power and loads of RAM, and be rack-mounted for easy access by technicians in a corporate environment.

Answer 116

188. B, C. Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC processors are designed to be high-end server processors. The Atom processor is a small form factor processor, and the Ryzen 3 is a desktop processor.

Answer 117

190. A, C. Arm Holdings, LTD. is the company that has developed the nine iterations of ARM processors. ARM is famous for developing Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC), and their intellectual property can be found in everything from embedded systems and smartphones all the way up to servers. An ARM processor is considered a SoC (system-ona-chip) rather than a CPU because processors are built with various features around the ARM processor.

Answer 118

191. A. If you disable the USB ports, a user won’t be able to attach a USB drive to copy files. Removing USB from the boot options will keep them from booting to it, but it won’t prohibit someone from using a USB drive. You can also purchase USB drive locks, which are little plugs for the USB ports. Just don’t lose your key

Answer 119

193. C. A SAN (storage area network) is a separate network that has only storage devices on it, but you still need a way to connect to that storage. Connecting can be done through a host bus adapter (HBA) connected through the PCIe bus on a network server’s motherboard. Since Fibre Channel (FC) networks are so fast, they are often used for SANs.

Answer 120

194. D. These pins are called headers. The ones mentioned connect the motherboard to the case front, where you will find USB ports, power buttons, HDD status lights, and reset switches

Answer 121

196. A. All modern CPUs are multicore processors, meaning they have more than one processor on a die and can execute at least four threads at a time. ARM is a processor architecture used in many devices, and Intel is a processor manufacturer.

Answer 122

198. A. Adding case fans can draw excess heat out of a case, and cooler air into the case. Most processors won’t shut down until they reach 70 to 100 degrees Celsius (158 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit), so if a person is working in that room, the ambient temperature won’t be that high. Heat monitoring software lets you see what’s going on but won’t help cool the case. Removing the chassis cover subjects the computer to debris and dust that can cause other problems, and a refrigerator is likely to cause condensation, which can short out electrical systems. Adding case fans is the best choice given. Using a water-cooled system or adding a bigger heat sink to the processor might also help

Answer 123

197. C. A webcam would be very inefficient and difficult solution at best, and FireWire would not be fast enough for today’s systems. While screen-capture software might work, the best solution would be to install a capture card either as a discrete (external) unit or in a PCIe slot on a motherboard. The capture card can take some of the workload off the processor, making the video less likely to skip, lag, or freeze.

Answer 124

199. B, C. Some power supplies will have a 20-pin+4-pin connector designed to connect to a 24-pin P1 motherboard connector. An ATX12V PSU is the perfect solution. A 20-pin P1 connector plus a P4 connector is the right number of pins, but the P4 connector is not compatible with the main motherboard power. ATX12VO is a 12 volt only connector that has only 10 pins and that would not be compatible with this motherboard, unless it had other connections.

Answer 125

200. D. A modular power supply allows you to use only the connectors you need by plugging and unplugging compatible cables into the PSU.

Answer 126

201. B. If you have a system that can’t have any downtime, then you need to have redundant everything. An HBA is a host bus adapter, which you only need if connecting external devices. A display doesn’t have anything to do with redundancy. A dual rail power supply can still fail. For this situation you would want redundant power supplies that are hot-swappable.

Answer 127

203. D. Most modern network-enabled multifunction devices will have Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet connections. They may also have AirPrint support for Apple devices. They are not likely to have RFID as a connection type, although they may have an RFID reader for secure print job authentication.

Answer 128

204. C. The only type of printer that will print on all copies of multipart forms is an impact printer, usually a dot-matrix. It’s the only type of printer listed that makes a mark by physically striking the paper. These multipart forms are sometimes called NCR (No Carbon Required) or carbonless multipart forms. The back of each page, except the last one, will have a coating of microencapsulated ink or dye that produces an image when it is pressed or written on.

Answer 129

205. D. If you have a printer with multiple trays, normally when you print there will be a setting that allows you to choose which tray to print from. Letterhead can be in one tray and plain paper in another. Orientation is whether the paper is printed in the taller or wider direction. Duplexing means printing on both sides, and quality settings let the user choose either faster or better printing.

Answer 130

206. A, D. Both laser and inkjet printers occasionally need to be calibrated. Exactly when depends on the printer, but often for inkjet printers it’s after installing a new ink cartridge, and for laser printers, when you need to adjust colors.

Answer 131

207. A. Secured prints is the feature described. Secure print jobs are retrieved at the device based on user authentication by using either a password or a security badge, depending on the printer. Auditing won’t prevent attacks, but it will show you when the printer is being accessed and by whom, much like Event Viewer. Other security features might include removable hard drives with the printer, overwriting documents following DoD (Department of Defense) requirements, and data encryption.

Answer 132

208. A. A punchdown block can be found in a telecommunications closet mounted on a networking rack. Network drops from work areas are terminated (punched down) in the back, and cables with RJ-45 connectors connect the front to a switch or router. Punchdown blocks provide a neat way to keep cables organized. Switches and routers are network connectivity devices. A terminator is another name for a terminating resistor, which is sometimes needed at the end of a length of coaxial cable.

Answer 133

209. A, C. Resin and filament are the consumable materials used by 3D printers to make the 3D objects. The extruder nozzle will often last the life of the printer. There may be a tape or base material that lines the print bed that is also replaced for each new print job so that the print job can be easily removed from the print bed.

Answer 134

210. A, B, C. Nonvolatile Memory Express (NVMe), SATA, and PCIe are all communication methods used by solid-state drives to connect to the motherboard for transferring data between the drive and CPU. IDE is a legacy connection technology that was used with the original ATA drives, parallel ATA (PATA).

Answer 135

211. C. There are five major versions of PCIe currently specified: 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0. For the five versions, a single bidirectional lane operates at a data rate of 250 MBps, 500 MBps, approximately 1 GBps, roughly 2 GBps, and nearly 4 GBps respectively. Each PCIe slot can have up to 16 lanes, the number of lanes being indicated by x1, x4, x8, x16. (The x is pronounced as by.) Therefore, a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot can support up to 64 GBps of bandwidth. (16 x 4 = 64).

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