Hardware

What this domain actually tests

The second-largest domain and the classic A+ content: motherboards, CPUs, RAM, storage, power, cooling, and BIOS/UEFI.

It is not conceptually hard. It is a memorisation domain, and refusing to accept that is a common way to fail it.

The traps

RAID levels

Reliably tested, easily learned, and free marks:

RAID	What it does	Min disks	Survives
0	Striping — speed, no redundancy	2	Nothing. One disk dies, all data is lost.
1	Mirroring — full redundancy, half usable capacity	2	One disk failure
5	Striping with distributed parity	3	One disk failure
10	Mirrored pairs, striped — speed and redundancy	4	One disk per mirrored pair

The trap: RAID 0 provides no redundancy at all. It is purely for speed, and candidates who see "RAID" and think "safe" get it wrong. Also note RAID 5 survives exactly one disk failure — two simultaneous failures destroy the array.

Storage interfaces

HDD (mechanical, cheap, slow), SSD (no moving parts, fast), NVMe (SSD over PCIe — much faster than SATA SSD). Form factors: SATA (the cable) versus M.2 (the slot). An M.2 drive can be either SATA or NVMe, which is exactly the sort of detail the exam enjoys.

If a scenario asks for the fastest storage, it is NVMe.

RAM

DDR4 versus DDR5 are not interchangeable — different notch positions, different slots. DIMM (desktop) versus SO-DIMM (laptop). Questions describe an upgrade and ask what will physically fit.

The spec lists

These are pure recall and they are the fastest marks on the exam. Drill them as flashcards from day one:

• USB generations and their speeds
• Display connectors — DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI, VGA
• Ethernet cable categories — Cat 5e, Cat 6, Cat 6a — with speeds and maximum distances
• CPU socket types and what distinguishes them

How to study it

Open a real PC. Reading about RAM slots produces weak memories; physically identifying a DIMM, an M.2 slot, a PSU connector, and a PCIe slot produces strong ones. One old desktop covers most of this domain, and an hour with a screwdriver beats a day of reading.

For what you cannot touch — server RAID arrays especially — watch a short video.

Then treat the spec lists as spaced-repetition flashcards, ten minutes daily, rather than something to read through. Spaced practice turns an impossible-looking list into automatic recall in about three weeks, and these questions are the most certain marks available anywhere on Core 1.

At 25% of the exam, this domain plus troubleshooting is over half your score.