F1KF 11: Install & Maintain Computer Hardware Russell Taylor

F1KF 11: Install & Maintain Computer Hardware About Upgrading Making cost-effective choices About Fault Fixing – Diagnosis / Repair Using Utilities Using the right one at the right time

What To Expect: 3 Outcomes Outcome 1 – 20 Multiple Choice Questions Outcome 2 – Practical: Set up an operational computer system with a range of computer hardware Outcome 3 – Practical: Maintain and upgrade an existing computer system.

Closed Book Supervised Individual Work An objective test consisting of 14 questions Over 60% must be correctly answered = 9 questions correct. Maximum of two attempts only

Outcomes 2 and 3 are assessed by a set of practical tasks and a candidate logbook to record all practical tasks successfully completed by the candidates. Open Book: access to books, handouts, notes or any other learning material Suitable lab equipment available to all candidates

Upgrade a current PC to improve performance PC Spec: Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, using an LGA775 Socket –type Motherboard 2GB RAM Standard Video-card 52x DVD R/W Drive 160GB Serial HDD Optical Mouse Standard Keyboard 17" LCD Monitor MS Windows XP Pro Standard Sound Card

The Motherboard's FSB (Front Side Bus) speed is an important indicator of a Computer's speed. It is a bi-directional bus (i.e., interface) that carries all electronic signals to and from the CPU to the components - Hard Disk, Main Memory, etc. The faster the FSB, the faster your Computer! FSBs today come at speeds of 667 MHz, 800 MHz as well as 1 GHz

Current technologies here are ISA and SATA, with Hard Disk speeds being 5400 RPM, 7200 RPM and RPM. Of the two technologies, SATA is faster.

Details about Memory technologies would take too long to explore! EDO, SDRAM, PC100, PC133, PC800 RDRAM and DDR DRAM are memory technologies, past and present. As far as your purchase decision is concerned, the higher the speed (Memory speed is internally measured in nanoseconds, and the speed it communicates to the FSB is measured in MHz) of the Memory, the faster your computer. Current Memory technology is DDR SDRAM and speeds are 1GHz to 1.3 GHz. _speeds.htm

All Motherboards today come with built-in Graphics and Sound. This was not the case earlier. However, the Graphics and Sound that is built into the motherboard is very basic. Most of the graphics-intensive programs - AutoCAD, Adobe Photoshop / CorelDRAW and the likes, would run much faster with an add-on 3-D Graphics card with dedicated memory. If you plan to run more that a Word processor, , Browser and such stuff, a dedicated Graphics Card, with 512 or 1024 MB of dedicated Video RAM is a must! Similarly, if you are into music editing/ making movies/ audio CDs/ DVDs on your Computer, you must go in for a dedicated Sound Card. Sound Blaster has remained the market leaders and preferred brand in the sound cards segment for many years now!

Today, you have a choice of Optical Drives. Here are the choices you have: CD-ROM Drive (Read CDs) Combo Drives (Read and Write CDs, Read DVDs) Super Drive (Read and Write CDs as well as DVDs) Blu-Ray Drives (Read and Write CDs, DVDs as well as the new Blu-Ray Disks) A plain vanilla CD-ROM Drive is now passé, while a Blu-Ray Disk may be a costly luxury at the moment, for, its prices will continue to fall. At the moment, the best bet is definitely to go in for a Super Drive that will let you play as well as record on both CDs as well as DVDs

Lastly - and equally importantly, your choice of Operating System will also affect your specifications. While Windows XP would run quite well with 512 MB Memory, you will require a minimum 1 GB, if your choice is Windows Vista Business: It is recommended that 2 GB RAM is a minimum if you are running Vista Home Premium, Vista Business or Vista Ultimate. What is the memory requirement for Windows 7?