Hardware Practice Flashcards

A technician notices a capacitor on a motherboard is bulging at the top. What should the technician do?

Answer: Replace the motherboard as the capacitor has failed

A bulging capacitor is a sign of failure and can cause system instability or complete failure; the motherboard should be replaced.

Which storage interface provides the highest sequential read/write speeds for consumer SSDs?

Answer: NVMe over PCIe 4.0

NVMe SSDs on PCIe 4.0 can achieve sequential reads exceeding 7,000 MB/s, far surpassing SATA's ~600 MB/s limit.

A user upgrades from a 65W CPU to a 125W CPU in the same socket. The system experiences thermal throttling. What is the most likely cause?

Answer: The existing CPU cooler is insufficient for the higher TDP

A higher TDP CPU generates more heat than the existing cooler was designed to dissipate, causing thermal throttling.

What does the term 'form factor' refer to when discussing hard drives and SSDs?

Answer: The physical dimensions and mounting specification

Form factor describes the physical size and shape of a storage device, such as 3.5-inch, 2.5-inch, or M.2.

A technician is asked to add a second monitor to a workstation. The GPU has one HDMI and one DisplayPort output. The second monitor only has VGA input. What is needed?

Answer: A DisplayPort to VGA active adapter

An active DisplayPort to VGA adapter converts the digital signal to analog VGA, enabling connection to the older monitor.

Which RAID level provides disk striping with distributed parity and requires a minimum of three drives?

Answer: RAID 5

RAID 5 stripes data with distributed parity across at least three drives, providing fault tolerance for a single drive failure.

A technician replaces a CMOS battery on a motherboard. What setting will most likely need to be reconfigured after the replacement?

Answer: System date and time

The CMOS battery maintains the real-time clock; replacing it resets the date and time to a default value.