PC Components Flashcards

Question

Other ITX-based forms?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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

Answer 6

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.

Answer 7

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

Answer 8

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

Answer 9

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.

Answer 10

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

Answer 11

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.

Answer 12

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.

Answer 13

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

Answer 14

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).

Answer 15

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.

Answer 16

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).

Answer 17

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.

Answer 18

Peripheral Component Interconnect Bus

Answer 19

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).

Answer 20

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).

Answer 21

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.

Answer 22

link | The link sends both data and control/timing instructions.

Answer 23

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

Answer 24

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).

Answer 25

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

PC Components Flashcards

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