Expansion Cards

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Let's take a look at expanding the capabilities of your computer.

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Your mother bought can include built in video, audio and networking capabilities.

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You can use those, or if you don't have any of those features built in.

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You can add those capabilities by installing expansion cards.

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Even if the features are built in, However,

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there may not be the later standards, or you may want to upgrade the capabilities of the system.

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For example, the built in networking on a motherboard

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may not support the later standards, such as one gigabit per second speed networking

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or the latest WiFi standards, such as a door to door 11 a. C.

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So let's take a look at the basics of installing expansion cards.

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Every mother board has a few expansion slots.

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They're located at the back of the motherboard, so when you install an expansion card, the sockets that might be built into it are visible from the back of the computer.

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So to recap, these expansion slots could be used to add functionality to the computer

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or upgrade its existing capabilities.

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For example, the video capabilities of the motherboard may not use very fast graphics,

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but if you need to work on graphics, files, play games or do video production and anything.

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You will probably want to install a fast video adapter with plenty of memory in it. In one of those expansion slots,

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although there were legacy standards for expansion cards, the latest are called P. C I A and P C I e.

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Off these p. C. I. Is the older standard, and this is what PC I slots look like

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on your standard is Petey I Express or P C I E. For short,

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this type of slot supports multiple lanes of communication between the motherboard and the expansion card, giving you much faster capabilities.

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As you can see, these two different standards for expansion slots often co exist on a motherboard,

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so you can install both the newer PC I'II devices or the older PC I devices in their slots.

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You can figure out how many lanes of communication are supported by a PC. I'II slot by its length.

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This is a slot that supports up to 16 channels of communication.

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We usually usually refer to this as X 16

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but right next to it is the much shorter X one slot.

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It supports only one lane of communication.

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Now you can install X one expansion cards in either slot, the X one slot or the X 16 slot.

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But obviously an X one slot cannot accommodate the much longer ex 16 expansion cards, so we can say that cards are up applicable but not down. Plausible,

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that is, you can install an expansion card in any PC I slot that supports the same or greater number of lanes than the expansion card does.

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Here are some reasons you may want to install a video expansion card or video adapter, and it is usually called.

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It may be that there is built in video capabilities in the motherboard,

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but it's not as powerful and fast as you need.

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You may also want to expand the number of video ports available,

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perhaps because you want to use multiple displays.

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This card, for example, has a V G, a port, an S video port and a DV aiport.

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This video is very old standard, and I doubt that you will come across that being used these days.

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But many monitors do support Devi I on door VJ connections.

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Psycho plug one displaying to the VD, a port that's the blue one

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and another into the Devi aiport. That's the white one.

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Windows will let me configure the use of both displays simultaneously

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and with different programs running on each display.

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Or, as I often use thes when teaching. One display shows that slides to the students, and the other display shows me my notes rather like a teleprompter.

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Some other boards do not have any video capability,

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so the video expansion card adds the ability to connect displays.

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That's another reason for installing video cards.

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Note that for displays there was an intermediate standard that was called a GP, or advanced graphics port

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that was faster than P C I but was superseded by P. C i e when that was released.

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So today, most motherboards don't support a GP cards. Most video cards are P C I. E.

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Network ports are often built into the motherboard,

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but older computers might have slower network interfaces.

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You see, Ethan at networks have evolved over the years from running a 10 megabits per 2nd 200 megabits per second to today's one gigabit per second.

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So let's say that the network adapter built into the motherboard supports only the older 100 megabits per second standard.

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But the rest of your network, that is. For example, your home router supports one gigabit per second networking.

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You could install a new one gigabit a doctor to upgrade the computer to support the newer, faster speeds.

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You can also upgrade your WiFi networking capabilities to support new your WiFi standards, such as a door to door 11 a seat.

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Or you might find that the motherboard doesn't even have built in support for WiFi.

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In that case, by installing a wireless network adapter card,

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you can give your computer the ability to connect a wireless networks.

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As you can see in the picture, these wireless adapter cards allow you to connect antennas at the back of the PC.

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Must motherboards do provide built in audio ports.

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These are the 3.5 millimeter jack sockets, which often are colored in various pastel colors to indicate what each one is false.

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For example, pink is for microphone. Lime green is for speakers.

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You can use these to plug in large speakers, head firms or microphones,

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but if your motherboard doesn't have audio built in

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or you want to upgrade to higher quality audio

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you can install audio expansion cards

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at one time, around 20 or so years ago, most of us connected to the Internet using our telephone lines

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that required a device known as an analog modem.

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Modems were devices that converted the data we wanted to send or receive into sand signals and transmitted them down the telephone wires.

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Modems could be separate devices or built into the motherboard.

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Alternatively,

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you could install modem expansion cards like this one in the expansion slots.

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Note that this is a pretty ancient technology, at least in terms,

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and you're unlikely to come across analog modems today.

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Today, most of us connect to the Internet via the cable company rather than telephone lines.

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So although cable modems are commonplace, analog modems are pretty rare.

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However, the comp here syllabus mentions analog modems, and that's why we're covering them here.

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I should just mention that there is still one situation in which analog modems are useful

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if you happen to find yourself in a location that doesn't have Internet access,

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but there is a phone line

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well, In that case, you might find yourself using analog modems because that's the only means of communication available to you.

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So let's have a look at removing and installing expansion slot cards.

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Here in my computer, I have a video card, a sound card and a modem.

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So here is my video card. It's a P C I E. Card.

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A lot of P C I E cards have a clip in the back that holds them in place. So I'm just going to

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removed that clip.

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And

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it's a little fiddly, as you can see

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and then take. The car died.

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So there's a video card

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you can see

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it has the pins of the bottom that go into the slot, has a fan to keep it cool,

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and they're at the video ports.

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Next, we have a sound card

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that is a P C. I.

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In the face.

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There are the audio ports at the back.

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If we hold that

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card

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up against

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the video card,

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you'll see that the P C I and the P. C I E. Pins I can't very different.

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And so those two cards will only fit into the appropriate slots.

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Next, we have a PC I modem card.

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There's that at the back you can see

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the R J 11 sockets. So one of the court would go from one of those into the phone line in your wall, and you could play the telephone it to the other one.

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Now, if you have taken any cards out, and therefore there's a space in the back

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than these blanking plates are put in,

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and that's to maintain the air flow throughout the PC, even when there are no cards in place.

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Now

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let's reinstall the cards and then

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at the back here, normally what you would do is put in a screw

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and that you see the little school honing the tap from the card.

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In this case, though, there's a cover that goes over the top so you don't need screws and it locks the card in place.

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So let's summarize what we have looked at. In Model 2.3,

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we looked at some of the internal components of a desktop computer.

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We took a tour around the motherboard the main circuit board found inside a computer,

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and we saw that various components I installed on that,

11:07

including the CPU or processor,

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and we saw that there are various types of sockets that have historically been used for installing Si, pues.

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We saw also that the CPU is usually hidden underneath a hit sink and a cooling fan.

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We looked at the power supply and the various cables that emerged from it to power the motherboard

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and any drives such as hard disks or optical drives.

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We looked at installing memory, commonly called Ram.

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We looked at installing mass storage devices like hard discs and DVDs,

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and we saw that the modern interface used for connecting these two. The motherboard is called Satya.

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We took a look at keeping the computer cool with a variety of fans, and we discussed liquid cooling.