3.11 Expansion Cards

As you study this section, answer the following questions:

• What is an advantage of the PCIe bus over the PCI bus?
• Which type of devices typically use Mini PCI cards?
• Which bus type is commonly used by graphics cards?
• What type of slot can a PCIe x1 expansion card be placed in?

After finishing this section, you should be able to complete the following tasks:

• Identify expansion slots and cards by sight
• Install an expansion card

This section covers the following PC Pro exam objectives:

• 1.0 Basic Hardware Components
  • Identify power supply connectors, motherboard components, CPU features, memory module form factors, and expansion bus types
  • Given scenarios with system specifications and end-user requirements, select and install appropriate power supplies, motherboards, CPUs, memory modules, and expansion cards

3.11.1 Expansion Buses and Slots

Expansion Buses and Slots 0:00-1:27

Technology in the computer world advances extremely fast. This is really cool, but can also be somewhat frustrating. The high-end computer you bought a month ago can suddenly become a thing of the past when the next new technology is released. Luckily, computers have a way to keep up with new technology and features by using expansion cards.

Expansion cards are circuit boards that are designed to fulfill a specific role, such as sound processing or graphics processing.These cards are often called dedicated cardsand are installed into a motherboard's expansion slots. The nice thing about expansion cards is that if the computer doesn't offer a certain type of feature, or if a new technology is released, it can be added without needing to buy a completely new computer.

Expansion cards and slots are designed to use a particular expansion bus standard,which defines the communications specifications and the physical characteristics of the card and the slots.Now, most expansion bus standards aren't compatible with each other. Because of this, it's important for you to be able to identify the bus type used by a particular expansion card or expansion slot. And there are some physical characteristics you can look for to do this.

For expansion cards, we look at the characteristics of the insertion tab. For expansion slots on the motherboard, you look at its length and how it's keyed.

So let's take a look at the first expansion bus type you should be familiar with, the peripheral component interconnect, or PCI.