Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®

Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs
Fifth Edition

Microprocessors
Chapter 4
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Education. All rights reserved.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Overview
Fifth Edition

• In this chapter, you will learn how to:

– Identify the core components of a CPU
– Describe the relationship of CPUs and memory
– Explain the varieties of modern CPUs
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– Select and install
Education. All a CPU
rights reserved.

– Troubleshoot CPUs

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs CPU Core Components
Fifth Edition

• The central processing unit (CPU) works as a

very powerful calculator.
• The CPU’s processing speed makes it look
intelligent.
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Education. All rights reserved.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs The Man in the Box
Fifth Edition

• Visualize the CPU as a man in a box.

– He will gladly perform anything you want him to
do, but he can't see or hear anything outside the
box.
– How can you communicate
Copyright with him?
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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.1 Imagine the CPU as a man in a box.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs The Man in the Box (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.2 How do we talk to the Man in the Box?

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Talking to the Man
Fifth Edition

• Imagine 16 lights
– 8 on the inside and 8 on the outside
– When an inside light is on, the corresponding
outside light is on.
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– Lights may be switched
Education. on or off from either side.
All rights reserved.
– Communication device is called the external data
bus (EDB).

Figure 4.3 Cutaway of the external

data bus—note that one light bulb pair
is on.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Talking to the Man (continued)
Fifth Edition

• Voltage applied to a little wire “flips the

switch.”

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.4 Close-up of the underside of a CPU

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Talking to the Man (continued)
Fifth Edition

• In reality, there are no bulbs, only little wires

– Voltage is applied or not
– Rather than “on-off-on-off-on-on-off-off,”
represented as “10101100”
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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.5 Here "1" means on, "0" means off.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Talking to the Man (continued)
Fifth Edition

• The CPU communicates with the outside

world using the external data bus (EDB)
– Uses binary (1 is on, and 0 is off) to communicate
– Data lines on the bus can be switched (turned on
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or off) from inside or outside.
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Registers
Fifth Edition

• Inside the box are registers

– Represented as worktables for the Man in the Box
• The four general-purpose registers found in all
CPUs are AX, BX, CX, and DX.
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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.6 The four general-purpose registers

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Codebook
Fifth Edition

• The Man in the Box needs one more tool: the

codebook or instruction set.
– The commands are called
machine language.
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– One command is a line
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of code.
– The complete set of
commands for a processor
is its instruction set.

Figure 4.7 CPU codebook

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Machine Language for the Intel 8088
Fifth Edition

10111010 The next line of code is a number.

Put that number into the DX register.

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01000001Education.
AddAll1rights
to the number already in the
reserved.
CX register.

00111100 Compare the value in the AX register

with the next line of code.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs The CPU So Far
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.8 The CPU so far

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Clock
Fifth Edition

• The CPU does no work until told to—even

though data may be on the EDB.
• You need a bell to alert the Man in the Box.
– This is referred to as a clock wire (CLK wire)
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–A chargeEducation.
on theAllCLK wire
rights tells the
reserved. CPU it is time to
work.

Figure 4.9 The CPU does nothing Figure 4.10 The CPU often needs more
until activated by the clock. than one clock cycle to get a result.
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Clock (continued)
Fifth Edition

• A clock cycle is the time it takes for the CLK

wire to charge.
– A cycle is one complete up-and-down segment of
the sine wave.
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– Every command requires at least two clock cycles.
Education. All rights reserved.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Clock Speed
Fifth Edition

• Clock speed is the maximum number of clock

cycles the CPU can handle in a given time
period.
• Clock speed is measured in hertz
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– One cycle per second
Education. All rights = 1 hertz (Hz)
reserved.
1 million cycles per second = 1 megahertz (MHz)
1 billion cycles per second = 1 gigahertz (GHz)
– Intel 8088 ran at 4.77 MHz
– Modern CPUs run at 3+ GHz

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Clock Speed (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.11 Where is the clock speed?

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs System Crystal
Fifth Edition

• System crystal governs CPU running speed

• Modern CPUs tell the motherboard the clock
speed it needs, and the clock chip
automatically adjusts.
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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.12 One of many types of system crystals

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs System Crystal (continued)
Fifth Edition

• Crystal can clock a CPU with a rated speed

higher than the crystal, but the CPU will
operate at the slower speed of the crystal.
– A 1 GHz crystal can clock a 2 GHz CPU, but the
CPU willCopyright
operate © 2016 by McGraw-Hill
only as fast as the crystal clock—
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1 GHz.
– Underclocking means running a CPU slower than
its rated clock speed—it does not take advantage
of all the power of the CPU.
– Overclocking means to run a CPU faster than its
maximum clock speed—it can overheat the CPU.
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Back to the External Data Bus
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure l4.13 Diagram of an Intel 8088 showing

the external data bus and clock wires

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Memory
Fifth Edition

• A program is stored on the hard drive.

• Hard drives can’t give the CPU data at a fast
enough speed, so something that stores the
program and gives it to the CPU rapidly is
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needed. Education. All rights reserved.
• Devices that hold ones and zeros that the CPU
accesses are called memory.
• Each line of memory has an address
– Used to locate the data

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Memory and RAM
Fifth Edition

• Random access memory (RAM) is organized

like a spreadsheet, with each row holding
eight bits (one byte).
– A bit is a one or a zero
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• RAM transfers and stores data to and from
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the CPU in byte-sized chunks

• Number of bytes of RAM varies from PC to PC,
with today's PCs holding billions of bytes of
RAM

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs RAM as a Spreadsheet
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.14 RAM as a spreadsheet

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs DRAM
Fifth Edition

• Computers use dynamic RAM (DRAM) for

main memory
– Dynamic rather than static
• Circuits need constant electrical charge and to be
refreshed to maintain
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McGraw-Hill
Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.15 Typical RAM

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Address Bus
Fifth Edition

• CPU and RAM need a method to

communicate, so they use the EDB.
• The CPU needs a helper chip—the memory
controller chip (MCC) to facilitate the flow of
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data fromEducation.
RAM All torights
thereserved.
CPU.

Figure 4.16 Extending the EDB Figure 4.17 The MCC grabs a byte of RAM.
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Address Bus (continued)
Fifth Edition

• The address bus is a separate set of wires

from the external data bus.
– Enables the CPU to control the MCC
– CPU tells the MCC which line of code it wants
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from RAM
Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.18 Address bus

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Address Bus (continued)
Fifth Edition

• The number of wires in the address bus

determines the maximum amount of RAM the
CPU can handle.
– An 8088 had 20 wires, which provided 220
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(1,048,576) combinations.
Education. All rights reserved.
• Address space of 1,048,57 bytes or one megabyte
(1 MB)

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Bits and Bytes
Fifth Edition

• Any individual 1 or 0 = a bit

• 4 bits = a nibble
• 8 bits = a byte
• 16 bits = Copyright
a word© 2016 by McGraw-Hill
Education. All rights reserved.
• 32 bits = a double word
• 64 bits = a paragraph or quad word
• Bits are represented as b (e.g., Kb)
• Bytes are represented as B (e.g., KB)

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Addressing Rows of RAM
Fifth Edition

• To determine the location in RAM

– First byte of RAM represented by twenty zeros
(00000000000000000000)
– Last RAM row represented by twenty ones
(11111111111111111111)
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Education. All rights reserved.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Modern CPUs
Fifth Edition

• Developers
– Intel has dominated the industry with its CPUs
and motherboard support chips.
• Modern Intel processors include Core, Pentium,
Celeron, Atom,© and
Copyright 2016Xeon brands.
by McGraw-Hill
Education. All rights reserved.
– AMD has kept competition in the CPU market.
• While Intel holds the most market share, AMD provides
quality CPUs at competitive prices.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Modern CPUs (continued)
Fifth Edition

• Early Intel and AMD CPUs were identical; but

they are no longer interchangeable.

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.19 Identical Intel and AMD 486 CPUs from the early 1990s

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Model Names
Fifth Edition

• Intel and AMD differentiate product lines by

using different product names, based on the
target market.
Table 4.1 Current Intel
Copyright and AMD
© 2016 Product Lines and Names
by McGraw-Hill
Market Education.
Intel All rights reserved. AMD
Mainstream and Core i7/i5/i3 A-Series, FX
enthusiast desktop
Budget desktop Pentium, Celeron Sempron, Athlon
Portable/Mobile Core i7/i5/i3 (mobile), A-Series
Core M, Atom
Server Xeon Opteron

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Code Names
Fifth Edition

• Both companies use code names to keep track

of different variations within models.
– CPUs labeled as the same model may have CPUs
inside that are very different from earlier versions
of that model.
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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.20 Same branding, different capabilities

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Desktop Versus Mobile
Fifth Edition

• Mobile devices need to consume as little

electricity as possible.
• Less electricity consumption extends the
battery charge and creates less heat.
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• Both manufactures have
Education. All rights created both mobile
reserved.

and desktop versions of their CPUs.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Desktop Versus Mobile (continued)
Fifth Edition

• Saving energy by making the CPU run more

slowly when demand is light is called
throttling.

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.21 Desktop vs. mobile, fight!

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Technology
Fifth Edition

• Ways CPUs have been improved

– Clock multipliers
– 64-bit processing
– Virtualization support
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– Parallel Education.
execution All rights reserved.

– Multicore processing
– Integrated memory controller (IMC)
– Integrated graphics processing unit (GPU)
– Security

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Clock Multipliers
Fifth Edition

• All modern CPUs run at some multiple of the

system clock speed.
• In early computers, the CPU ran at the same
speed as the bus.
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– Designers discovered
Education. All rights that the CPU
could run
reserved.
faster than other chips on the motherboard.
– Technicians had to set jumpers or dual in-line
package (DIP) switches on older motherboards to
configure the multiplier.
– Now the motherboard is automatically configured
through a function called CPUID (CPU identifier).
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Clock Multipliers (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.22 CPU-Z showing the clock speed, multiplier,

and bus speed of a Core i7 processor hardly breaking a sweat

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Clock Multipliers (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.23 DIP switches on a motherboard

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs 64-Bit Processing
Fifth Edition

• EDB and address-bus size increased in size.

• New technologies such as multimedia
extensions (MMX) and Streaming SIMD
Extensions (SSE) were added;
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– Caused Education.
shift to All
64-bit technology
rights reserved.

• Most new CPUs support 64-bit processing

– Can run a compatible 64-bit operating system,
such as Windows 8.1, and 64-bit applications.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs 64-Bit Processing (continued)
Fifth Edition

• CPUs also still support 32-bit processing for

32-bit operating systems, such as Linux, and
32-bit applications.
• Primary benefit to moving to 64-bit
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– Supports more All
Education. than 4reserved.
rights GB of memory – up to 16
EB (Exabyte)

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Virtualization Support
Fifth Edition

• Modern CPUs have built-in support for

running more than one operating system at a
time.
• Enables hardware-based virtualization
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support Education. All rights reserved.
– Makes virtualization easier and more resource-
efficient

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Parallel Execution
Fifth Edition

• Modern CPUs process multiple commands

and parts of commands in parallel execution.
– Older CPUs processed in a linear fashion.
• CPUs accomplish parallelism through:
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– MultipleEducation.
pipelines All rights reserved.

– Dedicated cache
– The capability to work with multiple threads or
programs at one time

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Pipelining
Fifth Edition

• Pipelining—CPU takes at least four steps

(stages)
– Fetch: Get the data from the EDB
– Decode: Figure out what type of command needs
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to be executed
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– Execute: Perform the calculation
– Write: Send the data back onto the EDB

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Pipelining (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.24 Simple pipeline

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Pipelining (continued)
Fifth Edition

• Current CPUs have many stages in pipeline

– Enables CPU to run more efficiently without
increasing the clock speed
• Current processors use multiple decode
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stages to reduce pipeline stalls.
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• Current CPUs offer multiple pipelines,

allowing the arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and
the floating point unit (FPU) to work at the
same time.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Pipelining (continued)
Fifth Edition

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill

Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.25 Bored integer unit Figure 4.26 Multiple pipelines

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cache
Fifth Edition

• A cache reduces wait states by using built-in,

very high-speed RAM called static RAM
(SRAM).
– SRAM preloads as many instructions as possible.
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– The cache on the
Education. CPUreserved.
All rights was called
the L1 cache
because it was used first by the CPU.
– The cache on the motherboard was called the L2
cache, and used second by the CPU.
• Later added to CPU package
– Most newer CPUs include three caches.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cache (continued)
Fifth Edition

• The address bus and external data bus

(connecting the CPU, MCC, and RAM) were
lumped into a single term called the frontside
bus.
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• The connection between
Education. All the CPU and the L2
rights reserved.

cache became known as the backside bus.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cache (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.27 SRAM cache Figure 4.28 CPU-Z displaying the cache
information for a Core i7 processor

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cache (continued)
Fifth Edition

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill

Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.29 Frontside and backside buses

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Multithreading
Fifth Edition

• CPU simulates the actions of a second

processor
– Enhances efficiency
– Does not increase processing power
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• Running multiple threads at the same time is
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also called simultaneous multithreading or

Hyper-Threading.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Multithreading (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.30 Windows Task Manager with the Performance tab

displayed for a system running a Hyper-Threaded Pentium 4

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Multicore Processing
Fifth Edition

• Dual-core architecture
– Multiple CPUs (or cores) combined into a single
chip, executing multiple threads at once
– Shared caches and RAM
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• Multicore processing Education. All rights reserved.

– Multicore CPUs common today

– Cores work independently of the OS
– Differs from Hyper-Threading, in which the OS and
applications have to be written specifically to
handle multiple threads

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Multicore Processing (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.31 CPU-Z showing the cache details of a Haswell Core i7

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Integrated Memory Controller
Fifth Edition

• Almost all current microprocessors have an

integrated memory controller (IMC)
– Moved from the motherboard chip into the CPU
to optimize the flow of information into and out
from the CPU © 2016 by McGraw-Hill
Copyright
Education. All rights reserved.
– Causes different CPUs to require different types
and capacities of RAM

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Integrated Graphics Processing Unit
Fifth Edition

• Video processing portion of computer tasks

handled by the graphics processing unit (GPU)
– Can handle certain tasks much more efficiently
than the standard CPU
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• Enhances computer’s overall performance
Education. All rights reserved.
while reducing energy use, size, and cost
– Ideal for mobile devices

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Security
Fifth Edition

• NX bit technology in all modern processors

– Enables CPU to protect certain sections of
memory
– Stops malicious attacks from getting to essential
operating system
Copyright © 2016files
by McGraw-Hill
Education. All rights reserved.
– Known by different terms
• Microsoft – Data execution prevention (DEP)
• Intel – XD bit (eXecute Disable)
• AMD – Enhanced Virus Protection
• ARM – XN (eXecute Never)
• CompTIA – Disable execute bit

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Security (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.32 DEP in Windows 8.1

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Selecting and Installing CPUs
Fifth Edition

• Techs face challenges of:

– Selecting the proper CPU
– Installing several types of processors
– Troubleshooting
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Education. All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2016 by McGraw-Hill Education. All rights reserved.

Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Selecting a CPU
Fifth Edition

• Select a CPU the motherboard can support

– Intel or AMD
• If buying a motherboard with a CPU:
– Select CPU appropriate for the intended purpose
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• Determine the type of socket on the
Education. All rights reserved.

motherboard
– Check motherboard documentation or
manufacturer’s web site
– Learn which sockets go with which family of CPU

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Selecting a CPU (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Figure 4.33 Supported processors and socket type

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Selecting a CPU (continued)
Fifth Edition

Table 4.2 Intel-based Sockets

Socket CPU
LGA 7751 Pentium 4, Celeron, Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, Core 2
Duo, Core 2 Quad, Xeon, and many others
LGA 11562 Copyright
Core©i3/i5/i7,
2016 byPentium,
McGraw-Hill
Celeron, Xeon
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LGA 11553 Core i3/i5/i7, Pentium, Celeron, Xeon
LGA 13664 Core i7, Xeon, Celeron
LGA 20115 Core i7, Core i7 Extreme Edition, Xeon
LGA 11506 Core i3/i5/i7, Pentium, Celeron, Xeon
LGA 11517 Core i3/i5/i7, Pentium, Celeron, Xeon

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Selecting a CPU (continued)
Fifth Edition

Table 4.3 AMD-based Sockets

Socket Pins CPU
AM31 941 Phenom II, Athlon II, Sempron, Opteron

AM3+ 942
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FM1 Education.
905 All A-Series
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2

FM2 904 A-Series

FM2+ 906 A-Series

G34 1974 Opteron

C32 1207 Opteron

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Installation Issues
Fifth Edition

• Pay careful attention to:

– CPU pins
– Power supply
– Adequate cooling
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• Consider whether to leave CPU at stock
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settings or overclock it

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Socket Types
Fifth Edition

• Socket types
– Intel processors use a land grid array (LGA)
package
– AMD CPU pins align with socket holes—a pin grid
array (PGA)
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– CPUs and sockets keyed to help prevent
misalignment and incorrect insertion
• Zero Insertion Force (ZIF) sockets

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Socket Types (continued)
Fifth Edition

Figure 4.35 AMD-based

socket without pins

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.34 Intel-based

socket with pins

Figure 4.36 Underside and top of a CPU

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Socket Types (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.37 Moving the release arm Figure 4.38 Fully opened socket

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cooling
Fifth Edition

• CPUs heat up due to electrical power

consumption (wattage).
• Most CPUs use a combination of heat sink and
fan assembly to keep them within normal
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operatingEducation.
temperatures.
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Figure 4.39 Intel stock heat sink

and fan assembly

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cooling (continued)
Fifth Edition

• OEM CPU coolers

– Heat sink and fan assemblies included with a
retail-boxed CPU
• Specialized CPU coolers
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– Third-party heat-sink
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reserved. for a
variety of CPUs
– Usually exceed the OEM heat sinks in the amount
of heat they dissipate

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cooling (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.40 Cool retail heat sink

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cooling (continued)
Fifth Edition

• Liquid cooling works by running some liquid

(usually water) through a metal block that sits
on top of the CPU, absorbing heat.
• Apply a small amount of thermal paste
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(thermal Education.
compound, All rightsheat dope, or nasty silver
reserved.

goo) to the CPU before attaching the heat

sink.
– Applying too much or too little can cause the CPU
to overheat and fail.

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cooling (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.41 Liquid-cooled CPU

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cooling (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.42 CPU fan power header on motherboard

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cooling (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.43 Applying thermal Figure 4.44 AMD stock heat-sink

paste and fan assembly

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Cooling (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.45 Heat-sink and fan assembly

mounted to motherboard with screws

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Overclocking
Fifth Edition

• For the CPU to work, the motherboard speed,

multiplier, and voltage must be set properly.
– Motherboard uses the CPUID functions to set
these options automatically.
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– Some motherboards enable you to adjust these
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settings.
• Some people intentionally run their systems
at clock speeds higher than the CPU was
rated, a process called overclocking, to
enhance performance.
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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Overclocking (continued)
Fifth Edition

• Intentional overclocking of a CPU immediately

voids most warranties.
– Can cause system instability, lockups, frequent
reboots, or damage, and may destroy CPU
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• Overclocking is done through jumpers, CMOS
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settings, or software configuration.
– Usually involves increasing the bus speed for
the system and increasing the voltage going into
the CPU

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Overclocking (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.46 Manually overriding CPU settings in the system setup utility

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Overclocking (continued)
Fifth Edition

• In case you need to go back to CMOS defaults,

use the CMOS clear jumper setting from the
motherboard manual.

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.47 CMOS-clear jumper

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Troubleshooting CPUs
Fifth Edition

• Overheating
– This condition can cause system to not start or to
lockup.
– Newer CPUs will usually shut themselves down
before overheating.
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– Most heating problems are due to faulty
installation or environmental issues.
• Catastrophic failure
– Less common than overheating

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Symptoms of Overheating
Fifth Edition

• Problems to address with a faulty installation.

– Too much thermal paste can impede the flow of
heat from the CPU to the heat sink.
– Not enough thermal paste can cause the CPU to
heat upCopyright
and shut© 2016down.
by McGraw-Hill
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– Failure to connect fan power to the motherboard
can cause CPU to heat up and shut down.
• Environmental heat or lack of adequate
ventilation
– Can cause CPU to heat up and shut down

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Catastrophic Failure
Fifth Edition

• Displays a proprietary crash screen

– Window’s Blue Screen of Death (Windows Stop
error)
– Spinning pinwheel on Mac OS X
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• May cause PC to shut down or go black
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• May burn up components

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Troubleshooting PCs Catastrophic Failure (continued)
Fifth Edition

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Education. All rights reserved.

Figure 4.48 Blue Screen of Death

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Mike Meyers’ CompTIA A+®
Guide to
Managing and
Beyond A+
Troubleshooting PCs
Fifth Edition Intel Core M
• Very low power (4.5 watts)
– Compared with mobile version of Core i7 at 57
watts
• Modest processing power – falls between
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Atom and mobile Core i3 Education. All rights reserved.

• Manufacturers can skip the fan

• Running in Apple MacBook

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