Parts of a PC
Motherboard, processor, memory, storage, graphics card, power supply, cooling and firmware: what each part does, the units on a spec sheet and diagnosing common faults.
- 27 cards
- 6 topics
- Free
The outline, topic by topic
Each topic is weighted the way the exam weighs it.
- Concepts
- Questions
- Sort and link
- The numbers
- Scenarios
- Understand
A few cards from the deck
Motherboard: what is it?
Show the answer
The main circuit board, which holds the processor socket, the memory and expansion slots and the connectors, and links every component together.
Its form factor (ATX, micro-ATX…) sets the case size. Its socket and chipset set which processors and memories are compatible.
What does “3.6 GHz” measure on a processor's spec sheet?
- Clock cycles per second, here 3.6 billion
- Instructions executed per second, here 3.6 billion
- The size of its cache, here 3.6 GB
- Its power consumption, here 3.6 W
Show the answer
Clock cycles per second, here 3.6 billion
The gigahertz counts clock ticks. An instruction often takes several cycles, sometimes under one thanks to internal parallelism: you cannot go from GHz to instructions per second.
The motherboard's … handles exchanges between the processor, the ports and the storage.
Show the answer
The motherboard's chipset handles exchanges between the processor, the ports and the storage.
It determines the number of USB ports, PCIe slots and drives the board can handle.
Processor (CPU): what is it?
Show the answer
The component that executes programs' instructions; its spec sheet gives its frequency in GHz and its number of cores.
A core runs one stream of instructions. More cores lets several run side by side; more GHz makes each core run faster.