Cockles' Corking Quiz

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Good morning all

Whilst slogging through the A+ MM book in my quest to understand electrical thingys, I thought I'd write my own little quiz for anyone who cares to either refresh the old grey matter or add some snippets of info to their brain boxes as I was in early this morning and couldn't think what to look up on IMDB.

This week: The PSU!!!!!

Two notes though

a) A disclaimer. These questions in no way represent the A+ exam, they are just ones I have written based on what I have learnt or are loosely adapted from the MM book.

b) I have put this in the Lounge as they are not official test questions, just a bit of fun, so didn't think it wise to put in the Certifications bit (unless you mod guys think otherwise)

Answers after I've had my brekkie

Have fun

Which of the following would offer the best protection for a PC

a) A surge protector rated 1000j with an online UPS
b) A surge protector rated 1500j with a standby UPS
c) A surge protector rated 1200j with an online UPS
d) A surge protector rated 1000j with a standby UPS

Burt Reynolds has installed an extra hard drive in his client’s machine. However, when he goes to boot it back up, the system will not start. It worked fine before he installed the hard drive. What do you think the problem is?

a) The hard drive is SATA but the motherboard connector is IDE
b) The power supply does not supply enough wattage to power the extra component
c) Burt Reynolds doesn’t know how to install a hard drive
d) He hasn’t installed the drivers for the hard drive

Which of the following will allow for cooler air within a PC case?

a) A closed case with the PSU fan running, plus two mounted case fans, one running as intake and another as exhaust
b) A closed case with the PSU fan running, plus two mounted case fans, both running as exhaust
c) Running with the PSU fan and a side panel open
d) Running with the PSU fan, two case fans but all unused expansion slot covers removed

Looking at his new PSU, Paul Daniels is going through the various plugs on his unit and he notices several plugs share the same physical attributes, that is with 4 pin holes in a row, chamfers on the sides of the plug, and 4 wires coming out of it: one red, one yellow and two black. What connector do you think this is?

a) Mini
b) P4
c) Molex
d) P1

A client comes to you as an A+ Technician experiencing problems with a PC that you find stem from a failing PSU. What would be your next step?

a) Remove the old PSU and replace it with a new one
b) Open up the PSU and see if you can spot any blown capacitors. Replacing them will be cheaper than buying a new unit
c) Recommend the client uses the PSU until it finally goes, getting longevity from it
d) Change the voltage of the PSU by the switch on the back and see if it works better that way

When buying a new PSU, put in order of importance what you should look for:

a) The form factor of the PSU
b) The amount of connectors it has
c) Whether it glows when switched on
d) The power output of the PSU

Whilst trying to work out the wattage requirements of a new hard drive, you notice some figures on the back which read ‘12V – 0.38A’ and ‘5V – 0.67A’. What is the wattage required (to the nearest whole figure) to run this hard drive?

a) 12W
b) 18W
c) 8W
d) 6W

Typically, when does a PSU output the most power?

a) On boot-up
b) On shut-down
c) When connected to the Internet
d) When the PC is playing media such as a DVD

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

[HIDE] B,B(but depends what you mean by will not start.. ie fails to boot to windows, fails to detect hard drive or fails to show any signs of life what so ever...inother words the answer could be all of em!!) A (but would sound liek a rocket!) C, A, D,C and finally A (beacuse you state outputs the most power and there is a surge when you turn on a psu that last for milliseconds other wised i go for D!)[/HIDE]

So those are my answers....

tho i think these are better..:-

e) best protection for a PC - Kepp it away from idots who think they know computers but dont!

e) Burt reynolds is an actor not an IT tech so is it any wonder the damn thing dont work now???

e) Water cool it! it will also be a lot quieter!

e) Paul Daniels is a magician who could make it work even when not pluged in so who cares what the connector is!!

e) Sell them a new PSU at a higly inflated price and give the new apprentice the old one to fix... that'll teach him to make krap tea!

C) If it glows when switched on its either very hot or radioactive!! either way its not a good pc!

e) Whats a Watt Watson??

e) when i try to play Far Cry with full graphics settings and sound set to max..... why wont that damn gun kill the mutant!!!!!!!!!


PS SHOULDNT THIS BE MOVED TO THE A+ FORUM???

 

Go to the top of the class, have a gold star and you are allowed to stay up late and watch Grange Hill

Ps didn't move it to A+ as they are not test questions, as said in my hastly scribbled disclaimer. I'll probably get sued if some knob'ead takes the questions literally then fails his test (or her test, women can take tests too)

 

Moved to A+

Will take the quiz later - First day back with all the kids and teachers! I'm demented!

 

Disclaimer??? you mean there was one??? never read it!! just like EULAs noone ever reads lol.

Oh well Si's moved it now so should confuse a few ppl!

 

I'll have a stab at these for a giggle...
[HIDE]c)
b)
a) But IMHO it is arguable
c)
a)
a & d, b, c
c) - based on the word 'run' - starting will take more current on the 12V rail
d) Difficult call between d and a
[/HIDE]

Nice collection there!

Harry.

 

Thank you Sir

All correct. you win a date with Jimmy Krankie!!!

Must check though, I thought PSU's outputted most power on startup during the POST test rather than actually running hardware during operation, does that sound reasonable?

 

Hence my comment about it. The main surge on switch-on is the power required to spin the drives up. At one time this was a considerable surge because the drives were so big, so the rotational energy required was substantial. SCSI even included a 'spin-up' command so that the adaptor could bring the drives up one after the other.

So in the early days 'switch-on' produced the biggest power useage, as otherwise the machine was fairly constant in power useage even when working 'hard'.

Nowadays, with graphics cards taking a significant amount of power, and processors trying to reduce the heat they produce, along with smaller disks that don't require such a surge at switch-on, I'm not so sure what is the biggest draw.

Running a DVD means the DVD drive is spinning, the processor is hard at work decoding MPEG4 and the graphics card is being hammered by the video stream.

Perhaps I'll dig out my power meter and see what it says!

Harry.

 

[HIDE]

Which of the following would offer the best protection for a PC


b) A surge protector rated 1500j with a standby UPS

Burt Reynolds has installed an extra hard drive in his client’s machine. However, when he goes to boot it back up, the system will not start. It worked fine before he installed the hard drive. What do you think the problem is?

b) The power supply does not supply enough wattage to power the extra component (possible but unlikely but as this is a PSU question I have left it as an answer)
c) Burt Reynolds doesn’t know how to install a hard drive (possibly Burt didn't set the master/slave cs, jumpers correctly

Which of the following will allow for cooler air within a PC case?

a) A closed case with the PSU fan running, plus two mounted case fans, one running as intake and another as exhaust
b) A closed case with the PSU fan running, plus two mounted case fans, both running as exhaust

(I believe both of the above would help but answer *a* would be my choice if I was limited to one answer)

Looking at his new PSU, Paul Daniels is going through the various plugs on his unit and he notices several plugs share the same physical attributes, that is with 4 pin holes in a row, chamfers on the sides of the plug, and 4 wires coming out of it: one red, one yellow and two black. What connector do you think this is?

c) Molex

A client comes to you as an A+ Technician experiencing problems with a PC that you find stem from a failing PSU. What would be your next step?

a) Remove the old PSU and replace it with a new one

When buying a new PSU, put in order of importance what you should look for:

a) The form factor of the PSU
b) The amount of connectors it has
c) Whether it glows when switched on
d) The power output of the PSU

A > D > B (All, except C are important and to be honest the order is irrelevant) Even though I do like nice blue neon lights, they are not neccesary for the correct functioning of a PSU.


Whilst trying to work out the wattage requirements of a new hard drive, you notice some figures on the back which read ‘12V – 0.38A’ and ‘5V – 0.67A’. What is the wattage required (to the nearest whole figure) to run this hard drive?

d) 6W (V X I = P)

Typically, when does a PSU output the most power?

a) On boot-up


Edit, I see now where I went wrong with the HDD power question, I forgot to add the 5v and 12v power requirement together! Good question!

[/HIDE]

 

I would think that you would still get the peak current happen at the moment of switch on, this is usually the case but that peak current would soon (in milliseconds) drop to to a mean level which would be determined by the amount of work the components were having to do.