CompTIA Hardware Practice 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A technician notices a capacitor on a motherboard is bulging at the top. What should the technician do?
- Apply more thermal paste near the capacitor
- Replace the motherboard as the capacitor has failed (Correct answer)
- Discharge the capacitor with a screwdriver
- Clean the capacitor with compressed air
Correct 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.
Question 2: Which storage interface provides the highest sequential read/write speeds for consumer SSDs?
- SATA III (6 Gb/s)
- USB 3.2 Gen 2
- NVMe over PCIe 4.0 (Correct answer)
- eSATA
Correct 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.
Question 3: 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?
- The RAM is incompatible with the new CPU
- The existing CPU cooler is insufficient for the higher TDP (Correct answer)
- The power supply wattage is too low
- The BIOS does not support multi-core CPUs
Correct 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.
Question 4: What does the term 'form factor' refer to when discussing hard drives and SSDs?
- The speed rating in RPM or MB/s
- The physical dimensions and mounting specification (Correct answer)
- The file system format used on the drive
- The interface protocol (SATA, NVMe)
Correct 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.
Question 5: 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?
- A new GPU with a VGA output
- A DisplayPort to VGA active adapter (Correct answer)
- A VGA splitter cable
- No adapter is needed; DisplayPort and VGA are compatible
Correct 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.
Question 6: Which RAID level provides disk striping with distributed parity and requires a minimum of three drives?
- RAID 0
- RAID 1
- RAID 5 (Correct answer)
- RAID 10
Correct answer: RAID 5
RAID 5 stripes data with distributed parity across at least three drives, providing fault tolerance for a single drive failure.
Question 7: A technician replaces a CMOS battery on a motherboard. What setting will most likely need to be reconfigured after the replacement?
- RAM frequency and timings
- System date and time (Correct answer)
- CPU core count
- GPU driver version
Correct answer: System date and time
The CMOS battery maintains the real-time clock; replacing it resets the date and time to a default value.
CompTIA Hardware Practice 3
A technician notices a capacitor on a motherboard is bulging at the top.
What should the technician do?