Week 4, Motherboards, Power supplies, and Mass storage.

    In week four the learning was about computer motherboards, power supply, storage devices technology, and implementation of data storage through chapters 6 to 9. Chapter 6 was about the motherboard, which is an important part of the computer, and it includes components such as PCI slots, CPU sockets, RAM, front panel connections, southbridge, northbridge, different power connectors, BIO, and CMOS battery. There are different motherboard form factors, ATX, Micro ATX, ITX, and Mini ITX. It also explained expansion cards, their installation, and driver installation.

    Chapter 7 was about power supplies, it is standalone machines within the computer that gives power to the system. Powersupply contains different power connectors such as motherboard power sockets, Molex connectors, Mini connectors, SATA power connectors, and Molex splitters. The chapter discusses power supply installation, system cooling, the importance of system airflow, and troubleshooting of power supply.

    Chapters 8 and 9 discuss hard drives, and connectors such as PATA, SATA, and SCSI and their installation. It explained about protecting data through RAID, different types of RAID, implementation, how it works, and troubleshooting. This chapter also explained formatting, different partitions (FAT 32 and NTFS), file systems in macOS and Linux, disk defragmentation, and disk cleanup. Overall it was a great learning experience about important components of computers.