100+ PC Hardware Interview Questions - ALL IT KNOWLEDGE

 1 Microprocessors

                                                                 

1. Difference between processor from Intel & AMD ?

Ans: Both the processors have pros and cons. Intel is very much popular in desktop platform whereas AMD is good for Gaming PC platform. Intel is costlier as compared to AMD. AMD has got good graphics performance as compared to Intel. AMD sometimes gets hanged due to high temperature as Intel has no such kind of problem.

2. What is from side bus [FSB] ?

Ans: FSB stands for Front Side Bus. This is the communication speed between the processor and Northbridge on motherboard. This is generally measured in MHz. Now a days it is known as QPI.

3. What is microprocessor ?

Ans: Microprocessor is also called CPU is a chip which is placed on a motherboard. The main function of a microprocessor is to process the data. The speed of microprocessor is measured in GHz. Examples of Intel Microprocessors are Corei3, i5 and i7.

4. Full form of CPU ?

Ans: Central Processing Unit.

5. What is full form of HT technology ?

Ans: Hyper Threading.

6. Different slots of processors ?

Ans: Latest sockets for Intel processors are: LGA 1156, LGA 1155 and LGA 1150.

7. Tell me about Latest Processor ?

Latest processors from Intel are: Corei7, i5 and i3.

8. How to identify the faulty Processor?

Ans: If you find processor is cool after connecting the SMPS to the motherboard then processor may be at fault. Listen to the number of beep sounds and refer to the motherboard manual for the same.

 2. Memory

9. What is SD RAM and what is DDR RAM ?

Ans: SDRAM stands for Synchronous Dynamic Random Access Memory whereas DDR RAM stands for Double Data Rate Random Access Memory. Currently DDR RAM is used. SD RAM has got 168 pins whereas DDR RAM has 240 pins.

10. What is the frequency of DDR-SDRAM ?

Ans: 1333 MHz, 1600 MHz.

11. What are the type of RAM ?

Generally used in desktop types of RAM are: SDRAM and DDR RAM. In DDR we have DDR1, DDR2 and DDR3 RAM.

12. What is memory?

Ans: Memory is a chip which acts as a buffer in transferring the data from processor and hard disk.

13. Which memory retains the data storage after putting power off.?

Ans: ROM.

14. One short Beep comes at post What is problem ?

Ans: Normal POST and system is OK.

15. What is the speed of RAM ?

Ans: SDRAM has 100 and 133 MHz whereas DDR RAM has 800, 1066, 1333 and 1600 MHz speed.

16. What is the unit of memory ?

Ans: byte.

17. Full Form of RAM and ROM ?

Ans: Random Access Memory and Read Only Memory.

18. Non Volatile and Volatile Difference ?

Ans: Volatile memory: Date will be lost when your system shuts down. RAM is a volatile memory. Non-volatile holds its data even when the power is turned off.

19. How to identify the faulty RAM?

Ans: After starting the system if you are getting long beep continuously the your RAM is at fault.

20. What you can do when  there is RAM problem?

Ans: Clean the RAM using student eraser and place in a different slot.

22. What is Cache Memory ?

Ans: Cache is a small and fast memory which is placed between processor and RAM.

 3. Motherboards

1. Replace the new motherboard ?

Ans: disconnect all the connectors and cables from the motherboard. Remove all the screws. Then slowly take out the old motherboard from the system. Then uninstall the RAM, heat sink and processor from the mother board. Install all these components on the new motherboard. Place the new motherboard inside the cabinet and connect all the screws. Then connect back all the cables and connectors.

2. Which are the different types of connectors are present on motherboard ?

ATX.

3. What is motherboard.?

Ans: It is a main component inside a PC which allows other components to install on it e.g. processor and RAM and provides interface to connect to other devices e.g. monitor, keyboard.

4. What are various Voltage of mother board.?

Ans: 3.3 V, 5V, 12V, 1.5V.

5. You want to connect any card on motherboard how can you proceed?

Ans: Remove the power cord from the system. Remove the case cover. Take out the card from the anti static bag. Connect it on the first PCI slot. Connect back the case cover. Connect the power cord. Switch on the system and check whether the card is detected.

6. Function of north bridge and south bridge?

Ans: North bridge is used to communicate the processor with the main memory. And south bridge is used to connect the processor with the rest of the peripherals such as HDD, Keyboard and mouse.

7. In 915 mother board which types of processor can fit?

Ans: Pentium 4 and Celeron D.

8. Which are the peripherals on the mother board?

Ans: Integrated peripherals are: Audio controller, LAN controller, graphics controller, disk controller and USB controller.

9. Which are the chip set in mother board?

Ans: north bridge and south bridge.

10. What is PCI slot?

Ans: Peripheral Component Interconnect is a slot on the mother biard which allows to connect PCI cards on the motherboard. PCI operates at 133 MBps.

11. When CMOS Battery not install  ? display comes or not ?

Ans: Yes but sometimes it depends on the motherboard.

12. Latest Mother Board?

Ans: Intel H61, Q77 and Z77 chipset motherboard.

13. Components on Mother Board ?

Ans: Memory Controller Hub, Processor socket, RAM slots, PCI slots, BIOS, Ports, ATX connector, IDE and SATA Connectors, I/O Controller Hub

 4. SMPS

1. What is SMPS?

Ans: SMPS stands for Switch Mode Power Supply. It is used to convert 230V AC to various DC voltages which are used to provide power supply to various devices in a system.

2. What is AC & DC SMPS output & input volts.?

Ans: Input voltage is 230V AC and output voltages are: +3.3V, +5V, -5V, +12V, -12V etc.

3. Explain where is earthing ? Where is phase & where is nuteral?

Ans: In a 3 pin socket top point is earthing and right point is phase and left point is neutral.

4.      How SMPS works without mother board connectors

Ans: If you will short pin no.13 and 14 and connect the power cord then it will start without connecting to the motherboard.

5. Color code of power supply?

Ans: +5v – Red, +12v – Yellow, -12V – Blue, 0V – Black, +3.3V - Orange.

 5. HDD

1. How many H.D.D. can be connected to a single pc?

Ans: 4.

2. How many Pins to connect Hard Disk?

Ans: 40 pins in IDE and 7 pins in SATA.

3. Which are primary storage devices & external storage devices.?

Ans: Primary storage devices are RAM and cache, secondary storage device is hard disk and external storage devices are DVD, USB drives, flash memory.

4. What is Hard Disk?

Ans: Hard disk is the secondary storage device which stores data permanently. The size varies from 1600 GB to 2 TB.

5. MBPS stands for?

MBps – Mega Byte per second.

6. Replace the new hard disk & install of all the o.s. & other software also.?

Ans: Take the backup in some external storage device. Shut down the system. Remove the old hard disk, make the jumper settings (if required) and connect the new hard disk. Set the BIOS settings to boot from CD/DVD and check whether HDD is getting detected. Put the OS DVD and restart the PC. Install the OS. Install all drivers and softwares as well. Then restore the backup from external storage device to new HDD.

7. Types of Hard disk.?

Ans: IDE/PATA, SATA, SCSI and SSD.

8. How many SATA hard disk you can attach on 915 motherboard?

Ans: 4.

9. Hard Disk Drives – Types, Capacity?

Capacity – 250 GB to 4 TB.

6.Monitors

1. Different types of display cards ?

Ans: PCI, AGP and PCIe.

2. How many pins of Back of monitor ?

Ans: 15.

3. Stander VGA card having How many pixels.?

Ans: 800*600.

4. Difference between TFT & LCD?

Ans: TFT, which stands for Thin Film Transistor comes from the family of the LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) technology. It is a variant of LCD, it is a modern version of the LCD technology. TFT, has a very well improved image quality and makes use of active matrix addressing. TFT monitors are rapidly displacing competing CRT technology, and are commonly available in sizes from 12 to 30 inches.

5. What is Plasma?

Ans: A plasma display is a computer video display in which each pixel on the screen is illuminated by a tiny bit of plasma or charged gas, somewhat like a tiny neon light. Plasma displays are thinner than CRT displays and brighter than LCD . Plasma displays are also known as thin-panel displays and can be used to display either analog video signals or display modes digital computer input.

7. Assembling and Disassembling a PC

1. How many pc’s. you have assembled.?

Ans: 5.

2. Can you assembly old & new system confidently?

Ans: Yes.

3. What are the components of PC?

Ans: Processor, RAM, Motherboard, SMPS, HDD, ODD, Cabinet, Heat sink etc.

4. Assembling Computer parts.?

Ans: Prepare the cabinet by connecting SMPS, Install processor and heat sink on motherboard, install RAM modules, place the motherboard inside the cabinet, install the HDD and ODD in the cabinet, connect all the cables and connectors.

5. If new hard disk is to be assembled how you will do it and after what ?

Ans: First place the HDD inside the cabinet then connect the interface and power cable to the HDD. It has to be installed after motherboard installation.

6. Can we connect Hard Disk and CD ROM  through single cable?

Ans: Yes, but we have to make the jumper settings.

7. Steps of assembling?

Ans: 1^st Prepare the cabinet by connecting SMPS, 2^nd Install processor and heat sink on motherboard, 3^rd install RAM modules, 4^th place the motherboard inside the cabinet, 5^th install the HDD, 6^th install the ODD in the cabinet, 7^th connect all the cables and connectors.

8. Pins – Printer, FDD, HDD ?

Ans: 25, 34, 40.

 8. I/O Ports and Devices

1. How many pins in serial connector & parallel connector.?

Ans: 9 pins and 25 pins.

2. What is IRQ & Types.?

Ans: An interrupt request (or IRQ) is a hardware signal sent to the processor by the peripheral devices that temporarily stops a running program and allows a special program, an interrupt handler, to run instead. Types are maskable and non maskable.

3. Serial port Difference?

It is a 9 pin D shape connector.

4. What is hardware conflict ?

Ans: If the IRQ number of two devices is same then there will be a hardware conflict. And when it occurs both of the devices will stop functioning.

5. Different ports in pc’s & how to understand different ports?

Different ports of a PC are: serial, parallel, USB, VGA, LAN, PS/2, DVI, and you can understand by it’s shape, size, symbol and number of pins

9. Working with BIOS/CMOS

1. What is BIOS?

Ans: BIOS stands for Basic Input Output System. The BIOS software is built into the PC, and is the first software run by a PC when powered on. The purposes of the BIOS are to initialize and test the system hardware components, and to load an operating system or other programs from a mass memory device.

2. What is CMOS and its Full Form?

Ans: CMOS is a chip which stores the BIOS program and it’s full form is Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor.

3. POST  stands for?

Ans: Power On Self Test

4. How the bootable hard disk is detected by the system?

Ans: when the PC starts it checks for the CMOS settings and based on bootable device priority it tries to load the OS from the same.

5. What is CMOS setup?

Ans:  A set of settings such as date, time and hard drive settings stored in a CMOS chip and powered by a battery.

6.      BIOS Function ?

Ans: BIOS has 4 functions such as: POST, Basic Drivers, CMOS Setup and Bootstrap loader.

7. Diff. between BIOS & CMOS?

Ans: BIOS is a software or firmware where as CMOS is a hardware chip which stores BIOS program.

 10. Working with Printers

1. Laser printer is on [power] but printout is not coming, tell me the problems ?

Ans: Check the interface cable. Check whether printer is offline or online. Check whether the printer is stuck. Check error LED is glowing due to any reason.

2. If the printer is not working what is the problem?

Ans: Check the connection. Check whether printer is online or offline. Check the printer’s own self test page. If it is coming then printer is OK otherwise troubleshoot the printer first. Give a test page from the system. If is not coming then reinstall the driver.

1. How will you give the service maintenance to PC.?

Ans: Clean all the external peripheral devices like keyboard, mouse and monitor. Clean the keyboard using brush and mouse using soft linen cloth. Monitor can be cleaned using TFT cleaner. Then clean the whole PC using cloth and brush. Clean the SMPS properly as mostly dust is accumulated over here. Clean the ODD lens by using lens cleaner.

 11. Hardware Troubleshooting

1. If the display is improper what is the reason?

Ans: Check the VGA cable and connection. Check the POST of monitor. Check the brightness and contrast settings. Check the resolution settings from the PC. Reinstall the display driver. Check the display card if present. Replace the monitor.

2. What difficult problem do you faced in hardware ?

Ans: No display problem, PC hangs frequently, PC booting is slow, Beep sounds.

3. Have you troubleshooted any P.C’s and what ?

Ans: Yes, that is No display problem.

4. What is troubleshooting?

Ans: It is a step by step approach to reach to the root cause of the problem and resolve it.

5. What are the causes of Display Problem?

Ans: Connection, interference, RAM, Display card, BIOS, motherboard or display itself

6.      How to troubleshoot system

First check the connection then check the application/software, then check the driver, then check the OS, then check the BIOS and finally check the hardware. Read the FAQs.