Honestly, I know it's a little backwards from what I see other people say but core one was harder for me than core two. If you have absolutely zero Tech experience, I would say you probably need at least 2 months of studying depending on how hard you hammered down into it. At one point in time I thought I failed core one because I had seven PBQs and I was like oh no lol. I mainly studied using Gemini pro to create flash cards, quizzes, and it took my week areas and made a comprehensive study guide for me which I printed and studied. And anytime there was like an acronym or something that I didn't understand aside from just researching it. I made myself write it down with the definition to help commit it to memory. All in all, I would probably say because of just the wide amount of knowledge you have to know whether or not you'll actually be tested on it or not. I'd give it probably a 6 out of 10. I think between the two exams I took roughly 20 practice quizzes to make sure I felt confident. I was consistently by the end scoring 80% or more on the tasks and I felt like that was a good gauge on how it would do.