The different parts of computer and what they do!
These are all the components on a computer and also a list of what you need to get if your are planning to build a Computer. I will also be explaining what the job of that componet is.
If you want to see inside of a case with all of its components installed please click the button link above.
The Motherboard
The motherboard is also known as the main board. A motherboard is not only found in PCs but they are used if different type of electrical devices like TVs and mobile phones etc... They are just usual associated with complex devices like the computer. The motherboard is the main circuit of the computer where all the components plug into to make them work together so it sends and shares information between all the components. The motherboard also houses the bios (Basic input output system) and the bios runs as soon as the motherboard has been powered up so it can look for the operating system and boot into the operating system. It is also the software that makes all the components communicate. With out a bios a motherboard would not be able to boot because it would not know what to do. |
The CPU (Central processing unit)
The CPU makes all the calculations and logic functions. Everything you get your computer to do will go through the CPU at some point. The more powerful your CPU, so the more amount of Clock speed, cores and memory cashes your CPU has the more powerful the CPU is, will mean you can run more CPU demanding programs. The CPU is basically the brain of the computer and its what helps run programs. Computer code is basically mathematics. For example if you want to do simple maths, if you want to figure out 5 times 2 you would type 5/2 on the keyboard of your PC then it will turn into information that the computer will understand so a code that is just 1 and 0s. The 1 and 0 code that the computer can read will send to the CPU for analyzing and then will send back the answer that is 10. |
Ram (Random access memory)
RAM stands for Random Access Memory. Your brain has a conscience and a sub-conscience memory. The conscience memory is what you are using right now. The sub-conscience memory is what you will you need to remember something that happened a long time ago. When you access your sub-conscience memory, then those memories are transferred to your conscience memory. Think of a computer in the same way. The hard drive is the sub-conscience memory, so to speak. When your computer turns on, then what it needs to run your programs is then transferred to the RAM, or conscience memory of your computer. When you are finished with a program or application, and you close the program, then it is wiped out of the RAM in order to make room for more applications, but it stays on your hard drive so you can recall it later. |
GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)
The graphics card of a computer can be two things, on-board or an expansion card. It is also known as a Video card. The GPU is what produces the image you see on a Monitor. The graphics card is what outputs to your monitor, without it you would not be able to plug your screen/monitor and connect it to your computer. Without any graphics card there would be no visual output and you could not see the contents of what should be displayed by the O.S. If the system detected no graphics/video card on POST, it would simply not boot up properly. Without any video card or even a failed video card, the motherboard will tell you that something is wrong with a few Beeps. Essentially you can plug in one or two monitors into a standard video card. Moderm grapic cards run on full hd so you would use a HDMI cable to connect your monitor. |
Hard Drive
The hard drive can come in all diffrent sizes, that gigerbite size not centimeter size, and it was holds of your programs, music, videos and images etc.. Also the main software that the hard drive holds is the operating system witch when you turn on your computer the BIOS will find it and they boot from it. Hard drive start at arowned at 40gb of storage and go all the way up to 10tb witch is 10,000gb of stoarge. But if you want a faster option than a hard drive you can buy something called a SSD witch means Solid State Drive and they run a t farster speeds because they are not micanical and don't have the spinning disk in them. Unfortinatly SSDs are currently not very large in storage size and they can be very exspensicve compared to a normal hard drive. The best thing to do is buy a SSD and a Hard drive and then istall you operating system on the SSD for faster boot times and install a few of the esectial programs on the SSD for fast speed and then install everything els onto the hard dive. |
PSU (Power Supply Unit)
The power supply what is used to power all of the diffrent PC componets listed above. The power suply will take noral mains power from your wall socket and convert it to a diffrent voltage so you dont damage your pc componets. The power suply comes in all diffrent wattages so if you building a little office pc with a low powed graphics card you would only need something like a 500w power supply but if your building a big gaming rig you would need a 1000w power supply and depending on your setup in you have watercooling or duel grapic cards you would mabey want to go for something with a bit more wattage like 1200w. |
Sound Card
Nower days lotes of motherboards have built in sound witch means the sound card is built into the mother board. But the mother board sound cards are usualy bad quilty. So if you was to get a sound card that will plug into your computer through PCI-E or PCI you will get a much more crisp sound quilty and it will also free up your CPU a bit more because it wont have to process the sound because the sound card will do that. |
Optical drive
The optical drive is where you can put cds and dvds into your computer to download them on to your hard drive or to watch or lissen to them. With a optical dive you can also write files to a disk so you would be able to put music onto a disk or put a movie onto a disk. Another thing the optical drive is used for is istalling programs onto your computer, if you was to go out and buy a copy of a software you would put this disk into the optical drive then open then program and install. |
The Case
The case is what houses all of the componet of a computer to keep them safe. The cases come in all diffrent shapes and sizes. There are diffrent cases to suport diffrent types of mother boards. Also you can get pc cases that will be a bit bigger to suport more harddrives or watercooling. You can get cases that have windows in the eges of them so you can see the working coponets on the inside. When buying a case it is very optinal what you get because you can get a case the color you want and anything that you want to get to suport it. |
The Operating System
There are many diffrent operating systems for example windows xp, windows 7 and the newest one windows 8 all by microsoft. There many diffrent type of free operating system witch are called linux and there is the mountain lion etc... and that is by apple. The operating ststem is a low level program that runs on the computer. The operating system provides a software interface for the computers hardware, basic in and out put functions, file and network managment and allocation for the memory (ram). So to shorten things down a bit the operating system controles what the computer does and alowes you to be able to do things like managing files that are on your hard drive. |