Exercise 3. Find the explanation for the four types of a computer case.

Exercise 4. Answer the following questions:

1. What is a computer case?

2. What materials are cases made of?

3. What are the types of form factors? Give the explanation for each of them?

4. What is a fan? How does it work?

5.  How the internal components are protected from static electricity?

 

Exercise 5. Try to retell the text using your answers.

Lesson 3. Internal components.

Exercise 1. Read the definitions and translate them into Russian.

Electricity - the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence of electric charge.

 

Voltage - the amount of potential energy between two points on a circuit.

 

Current - a flow of electrical charge carriers, usually electrons or electron-deficient atoms.

 

Circuit - a path between two or more points along which an electrical current can be carried.

 

Exercise 2. Read and translate the texts.

Power supplies.

Electricity from wall outlets is provided in alternating current (AC). However, all components inside a computer require direct current (DC) power. To obtain DC power, computers use a power supply to convert AC power into a lower voltage DC power.

A power supply includes several different connectors. These connectors are used to power various internal components such as the motherboard and disk drives. The connectors are “keyed” which means that they are designed to be inserted in only one orientation.

The different connectors also provide different voltages. The most common voltages supplied are 3.3 volts, 5 volts, and 12 volts. The 3.3 volt and 5 volt supplies are typically used by digital circuits, while the 12 volt supply is used to run motors in disk drives and fans.

Power supplies can also be single rail, dual rail, or multi rail. A rail is the printed circuit board (PCB) inside the power supply to which the external cables are connected. A single rail has all of the connectors connected to the same PCB while a multi rail PCB has separate PCBs for each connector.

A computer can tolerate slight fluctuations in power, but a significant deviation can cause the power supply to fail.

 

Motherboards.

The motherboard, also known as the system board or the main board, is the backbone of the computer. A motherboard is a printed circuit board (PCB) that contains buses, or electrical pathways, that interconnect electronic components.

These are some connections on the motherboard where computer components can be added:

· Central Processing Unit (CPU) - This is considered the brain of the computer.

· Random Access Memory (RAM) - This is a temporary location to store data and applications.

· Expansion slots - These provide locations to connect additional components.

Chipset - This consists of the integrated circuits on the motherboard that control how system hardware interacts with the CPU and motherboard.

Basic input/output system (BIOS) chip and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) chip - BIOS is used to help boot the computer and manage the flow of data between the hard drive, video card, keyboard, mouse, and more.

Most chipsets consist of the following two types:

· Northbridge – Controls high speed access to the RAM and video card. It also controls the speed at which the CPU communicates with all of the other components in the computer. Video capability is sometimes integrated into the Northbridge.

· Southbridge – Allows the CPU to communicate with slower speed devices including hard drives, Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports, and expansion slots.

 

 

Exercise 3. Answer the following questions:

1. What types of current exist?

2. What is the main function of a power supply?

3. What are the most common voltages supplied?

4. What is a motherboard?

5. What computer components can be connected to a motherboard?

6. What is BIOS?

7. What is Northbridge and Southbridge?

 

Exercise 4. Try to retell the text using your answers.