Chapter 1 -- Motherboards, Processors, And Memory

Front 1

Printed Circuit Board

Back 1

(PCB) -- A conductive series of pathways laminated to a non-conductive substrate that lines the bottom of the computer.

Hint 1

Front 2

ATX

Back 2

(Advanced Technology eXtended) -- A motherboard developed by Intel in the mid 1990s to improve on the classic AT-style motherboard.

Processor and memory slots at right angles to expansion cards.

Processor runs cooler and you can install full length expansion cards.

Standard measure: 12" x 9.6" or 305mm x 244mm

Hint 2

Primary motherboard in use today.

Front 3

Micro ATX

Back 3

(ûATX) -- Designed for enhanced cooling but also to be smaller. With smaller comes less quantity of components. ie, less memory slots, expansion slots, headers, and chassis bays.

Designed with power supplies of lower wattage to keep heat down. Therefore more components like extra USB might require a larger power supply thanks supports.

Measures: 9.6" x 9.6" or 244mm x 244mm

Hint 3

They are square.

Front 4

ITX

Back 4

Family of form factors designed by VIA as low-power SFFs for specialty uses.

Mini-ITX -- 9.6" x 9.6"

Nano-ITX -- 4.7" x 4.7"

Pico-ITX -- 3.9" x 2.8"

Mobile-ITX -- 2.4" x 2.4"

Hint 4

Front 5

Small Form Factor

Back 5

SFF

Front 6

Form Factor

Back 6

Motherboard design classification.

Front 7

Bus

Back 7

A common collection of signal pathways over which related devices communicate within the computer system.

True buses share total bandwidth among all slots.

Front 8

SATA

Back 8

Serial ATA

Front 9

USB

Back 9

Universal Serial Bus

Front 10

PCIe

Back 10

(Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) -- Latest and greatest. Designed to be a replacement for AGP and PCI. It is faster than AGP and yet flexible as PCI. AGP got phased out cause of this.

Serial technology, not parallel.

Seven different link widths are supported: x1, x2, x4, x8, x12, x16, and x32 (x1, x4, and x16 are most common). From 1 to 32 they go thinnest to widest.

Four major versions: 1.x, 2.x, 3.0, and 4.0

Throughput starts at 250MBps per lane per direction for version 1.x and doubled with version 2.x to 500 MBps per lane per direction.

Front 11

SCSI

Back 11

Small Computer System Interface

Front 12

Chipset

Back 12

A collection of chips or circuits that perform interface and peripheral functions for the processor.

Usually given a name and model number by the manufacturer.

The Northbridge and Southbridge are chipsets.

Front 13

Northbridge

Back 13

A subset of a motherboard's chipset that performs management of high-speed peripheral communications.

Responsible for communications with integrated video using PCIe and processor-to-memory communications.

Directly connected to the Southbridge. It controls the Southbridge and helps to manage the communications between the Southbridge and the rest of the computer.

Hint 13

Front 14

Frontside bus

Back 14

(FSB) -- a set of signal pathways connecting the CPU and main memory.

Front 15

Backside bus

Back 15

(BSB) -- a set of signal pathways between the CPU and Level 2 or Level 3 cache memory.

Front 16

Southbridge

Back 16

A subset of the chipset that is responsible for providing support to slower on board peripherals.

Manages communications between peripherals like PS/2, parallel ports, serial and parallel ATA etc. and the rest of the computer.

Hint 16

Front 17

Expansion Slots

Back 17

Small plastic slots usually from 1 to 6 inches long and about 1/2-inch wide.

Used to expand things like video, network, sound and disk interface cards.

3 main types of expansion slots: PCI, PCIe, PCI-X

Front 18

PCI

Back 18

(Peripheral Component Interconnect) -- About 3 inches long, usually white [not always]. Became popular when Pentium-class processors were a thing. Mostly people have shifted away to PCIe now.

Operate at 33MHz or 66MHz over a 32 bit channel. Data rates are 133MBps (most common) and 266MBps.

Shared-bus topology used. Slots and adapters are made in 3.3V and 5V versions.

Front 19

PCI-X

Back 19

(PCI-Extended) -- looks like 64 bit PCI. From 66MHz to 533MHz. 64 bit bus. 4266 MBps throughput.

PCIe basically made PCI-X obsolete.

Uses shared-bus topology. All adapters run at frequency of slowest inserted adapter.

Front 20

Lanes

Back 20

The switched point-to-point signal paths between any two PCIe components. Negotiation is used to find the highest mutually supported lanes.

Front 21

Link

Back 21

The lanes or lane that a switch interconnects between devices.

Front 22

AGP

Back 22

(Accelerated Graphics Port) -- phased out by PCIe

Front 23

Up-plugging

Back 23

The ability to use a higher capability slot for a lesser adapter. (You can use a smaller card in a longer slot)

If up-plugging is not supported by the motherboard, the smaller card will only run at x1 in the longer slot.

Down-plugging (putting a longer card into a smaller slot) is not as commonly possible.

Front 24

SLI

Back 24

Scalable Link Interface. Done by NVIDIA.

Front 25

GPU

Back 25

Graphics Processing Unit

Front 26

DIMM

Back 26

(Dual Inline Memory Module) - circuit boards used for 64-bit RAM. DIMMs differ in number of pins they use. Common configurations are 164-pin, 184-pin, and 240-pin.

DIMM slots are classically black but they've been into color coding for them recently.

Front 27

SODIMM

Back 27

(Small Outline DIMM) -- a small form factor of memory modules that are used in laptops.

Front 28

MicroDIMM

Back 28

A small form factor of memory modules that are used in laptops.

Front 29

Swap file

Back 29

Another word for paging file. Additional space on the hard drive used for storing temporary data for RAM to increase its capacity. The technology that runs this process is referred to as virtual memory.

Relying too much on virtual memory can result in the whole system slowing down noticeably.

Front 30

Paging file

Back 30

Another word for swap file. Additional space on the hard drive used for storing temporary data for RAM to increase its capacity. The technology that runs this process is referred to as virtual memory. Relying too much on virtual memory can result in the whole system slowing down noticeably.

Front 31

PAGEFILE.SYS

Back 31

The swap file used in modern Microsoft OS.

Front 32

Virtual Memory

Back 32

Memory that is used by the RAM but is stored in a swap file on the hard drive.

Virtual memory cannot be used directly by the hard drive, it has to be ported over to the RAM to be used. The hard drive can only hold it for later use.

Relying too much on virtual memory can make the whole system slowing down.

Front 33

Cache Memory

Back 33

Very fast form of memory forged from static RAM that is placed between the CPU and the RAM to enhance the speed of the RAM.

Cache memory is fast because it predicts what the CPU will need next and it prefetches the data so it's ready when asked.

It is known by 3 classifications: L1 Cache, L2 Cache, and L3 Cache. L1 Cache is internal cache that is built into the CPU core. L2 Cache is external cache that is not built into the core and is either in the processor packaging or built into the mother board. If L2 Cache is present in the packaging AND on the mother board, the cache that is built into the motherboard is referred to as L3 Cache. As per distance to move the data, L1 Cache is fastest, L3 Cache is slowest.

Front 34

Die

Back 34

The processors silicon wafer. Also referred to as the core.

Front 35

Core

Back 35

The processors silicon wafer. Also referred to as the die.

Front 36

L1 Cache

Back 36

Level 1 Cache memory. Internal Cache memory. Fastest of the cache memorys.

Front 37

L2 Cache

Back 37

Level 2 Cache memory. External cache memory that is either in the processor packaging or on the motherboard. It is slower than L1 cache memory, but faster than L3 cache memory if present.

Front 38

L3 Cache memory

Back 38

Level 3 Cache memory. Cache memory that is built into the mother board while additional cache memory exists that is built into the processor packaging but is not on-die. It is the slowest of the 3 Cache memory types.

Front 39

PGA

Back 39

(Pin Grid Array) -- a CPU socket type with holes for CPU pins. It's older tech and CPUs that use this array tend to wear out faster than other CPUs.

Front 40

LGA

Back 40

(Land Grid Array) -- a CPU socket that has spring loaded pins that connect with a grid or lands on the CPU. It's a newer technology and generally it lasts longer than PGA sockets.

Front 41

ZIF

Back 41

(Zero Insertion Force) -- modern CPU sockets that reduce the need to apply considerable force to the CPU during installation.

Front 42

Firmware

Back 42

Any software that is encoded in hardware, usually a read-only memory (ROM) chip.

Front 43

BIOS

Back 43

Basic Input/Output System

Front 44

UEFI

Back 44

(Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) -- successor to the BIOS.

Front 45

TPM

Back 45

(Trusted Platform Module) -- security coprocessor that can aid in authenticating boot devices.

Front 46

POST

Back 46

(Power On Self Test) -- a series of system checks run by the BIOS while booting up.

Front 47

MBR

Back 47

(Master Boot Record) -- master record used by the BIOS to boot the device after POST finishes it's work.

Front 48

CMOS

Back 48

(Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) -- a special memory chip that stores info that must be kept to maintain proper computer function [ie date, time, security info, etc.]

Front 49

DIP

Back 49

Dual In-line Package

Front 50

AMD

Back 50

Advanced Micro Devices

Front 51

HTT

Back 51

(Hyper-Threading Technology) -- an Intel technology that is a form of SMT.

Front 52

SMT

Back 52

(Simultaneous MultiThreading) -- allows multiple instructions to run in parallel in a processor.

Front 53

SMP

Back 53

(Symmetric MultiProcessing) -- must be supported by the OS to support HTT.

Front 54

Multicore Architecture

Back 54

A processor architecture in which multiple, separate dies are in the same package.

Front 55

CPU Throttling

Back 55

Reducing the operating frequency of the CPU during times of less demand. Used a lot for mobile devices. An automatic operation that is used to protect devices from damage due to high stress.

Front 56

APU

Back 56

Accelerated Processing Unit

Front 57

NX bit

Back 57

(No-eXecute bit) -- also known as the disable execute bit is a bit that can denote an area of memory as off limits for execution. It helps protect against buffer overrun attacks.

Intel refers to the NX bit as the eXecute Disable (XD) bit.

Front 58

DEP

Back 58

(Data Execution Prevention) -- the Windows XP OS NX support system.

Front 59

Buffer

Back 59

A temporary storage area that takes some of the load off of the primary circuit.

Interchangeable with register since the temporary storage is in a register.

Front 60

ECC

Back 60

(Error Correcting Code) -- memory error detection that runs check bits through an algorithm that SHOULD produce all 0s at the end. If only 1 error exists in an 8 bit set, the error can be corrected.

Front 61

Parity Checking

Back 61

Rudimentary checking scheme that offers no error correction. The 4 main types are...

1. Even

2. Odd

3. Mark

4. Space

Even and odd are used in systems that actually compute parity. Mark and space are used in systems that don't compute parity but expect a fixed value in the parity location.

Front 62

Memory Bank

Back 62

A set of 9 memory chips, 8 of which are used for actual memory while 1 is used to support parity. For the 8 other chips.

Front 63

DRAM

Back 63

(Dynamic Random Access Memory) -- needs a constant refresh signal or memory will be lost. Used for memory expansion cause it's cheaper.

Front 64

ADRAM

Back 64

(Asynchronous DRAM) -- slow because of the need for using wait states for fast CPUs. Not used anymore.

Front 65

FPM DRAM

Back 65

(Fast Page Mode DRAM) -- not used anymore.

Front 66

EDO DRAM

Back 66

(Extended Data Out DRAM) -- not used anymore.

Front 67

BEDO DRAM

Back 67

(Burst Extended Data Out DRAM) -- not used anymore.

Front 68

SDRAM

Back 68

Synchronous DRAM

Front 69

SDR SDRAM

Back 69

(Single Data Rate Synchronous DRAM) -- original Synchronous DRAM. Now considered a legacy RAM tech.

Ever clock tick would push 1 bit of data per pin.

Memory modules were PC66, PC100, and PC133 (named off of the clock rate of FSB)

Front 70

DDR SDRAM

Back 70

(Double Data Rate Synchronous DRAM) -- double pumps data by transferring 2 bits of data for every clock tick; 1 for the rising edge, 1 for the falling edge.

Front 71

DDR2 SDRAM

Back 71

(Double Data Rate, Version 2 Synchronous DRAM) -- still double pumps data, but also splits the FSB clock rate in 2 internally so that 4 bits of data are pushed through every FSB clock tick; 1 for both rising edges, and 1 for both falling edges. Also, peak voltage is lowered to 1.8V instead of 2.5V to keep down power consumption.

Front 72

DDR3 SDRAM

Back 72

(Double Data Rate, Version 3 Synchronous DRAM) -- a memory module that further doubles the amount of data pushed through from DDR2 SDRAM. Then peak voltage is again lowered to 1.5V from the 1.8V of DDR2 SDRAM

Front 73

SRAM

Back 73

(Static Random Access Memory) -- RAM that doesn't require a refresh signal. More expensive, but much faster than DRAM. Typically only used for cache memory.

Front 74

ROM

Back 74

Read Only Memory

Front 75

PROM

Back 75

Programmable Read Only Memory

Front 76

EPROM

Back 76

(Eraseable Programmable Read Only Memory) -- Erases by flashing it with ultraviolet light.

Front 77

QPI

Back 77

QuickPath Interconnect.

Front 78

QPI

Back 78

QuickPath Interconnect.

Front 79

SIMM

Back 79

Single Inline Memory Module

Front 80

SIPP

Back 80

Single Inline Pin Package

Front 81

144-pin

Back 81

SODIMM -- SDR SDRAM

Front 82

200-pin

Back 82

SODIMM -- DDR/DDR2 SDRAM

Front 83

204-pin

Back 83

SODIMM -- DDR3 SDRAM

Front 84

72-pin

Back 84

SIMM or old 32 bit SODIMM configuration.

Front 85

168-pin

Back 85

DIMM -- SDR SDRAM

Front 86

184-pin

Back 86

DIMM -- DDR SDRAM

Front 87

240-pin

Back 87

DIMM -- DDR2/DDR3 SDRAM

Front 88

100-pin

Back 88

Old 32 bit SODIMM configuration.

Front 89

LGA 775 (Socket T)

Back 89

Intel -- Pentium 4

Pentium 4 Extreme Edition

Pentium D

Celeron D

Pentium Extreme Edition (dual core)

Core 2 Duo

Core 2 Extreme

Core 2 Quad

Xeon

Celeron (4xx, Exxxx series)

Front 90

LGA 1156 (Socket H)

Back 90

Intel -- Celeron (G1xxx series)

Core i3

Core i5

Core i7 (8xx series)

Pentium (G6xxx series)

Xeon (34xx series)

Front 91

LGA 1155 (Socket H2)

Back 91

Intel -- Replacement for LGA 1156

Celeron (G4xx and G5xx)

Ivy Bridge

Front 92

LGA 1150 (Socket H3)

Back 92

Intel -- Replacement for LGA 1155 to support Haswell and Broadwell processors

Front 93

LGA 1366 (Socket B)

Back 93

Intel -- Core i7 (9xx series)

Xeon (35xx, 36xx, 55xx, 56xx series)

Intel Celeron P1053

Front 94

LGA 2011 (Socket R)

Back 94

Intel -- Replacement for LGA 1366

Has 3 versions that are not electrically compatible with each other.

LGA 2011-0

Sandy Bridge-E (Core i7-38xx and i7-39xx)

Sandy Bridge-EP (Xeon E5)

Ivy Bridge-E (Core i7-48xx and i7-49xx)

Ivy Bridge-EP (Xeon E5 v2)

LGA 2011-1

Ivy Bridge-EX (Xeon E7 v2)

LGA 2011-v3

Haswell-E (x99 chipset)

Haswell-EP (Xeon E5 v3)

Supports DDR4 memory

Front 95

Socket AM3

Back 95

AMD -- DDR3 memory support only

Phenom II

Athlon II

Sempron

Opteron 138x

Some AM3+ CPUs

Front 96

Socket AM3+

Back 96

AMD -- specified for CPUs with Bulldozer microarchitecture

Can accept AM3 CPUs

Front 97

Socket FM1

Back 97

AMD -- AMD Fusion APUs (Early A series)

Front 98

Socket FM2

Back 98

AMD -- a 904-pin socket for Trinity and Richland APUs.

Front 99

Socket FM2+

Back 99

AMD -- 906-pin socket for Steamroller APUs

Kaveri

Godavari

Accepts FM2 CPUs as well.