Motherboard
The motherboard is center of all operations in the computer, and everything in the PC routes back to the motherboard. The CPU is inserted into the motherboard, but requires an extra fan. The RAM also is inserted into the motherboard, as well as the graphics card, but everything else in the computer is plugged into the PC via wire. The outlets on the bottom right of the picture come out of the back of the PC case. This is where you plug in the mouse, monitor, keyboard, speakers, etc. The motherboard contains directions for the computer, and contains any component that you could need, which you obviously won't use all of them. If you examine a motherboard, it will contain many metal bars going to each component. Just like everything else in a computer, the motherboard needs power, too.
|
CPU (Central Processing Unit)
The Central Processing Unit performs almost all the operations for the computer, and is basically the computers brain. There are two parts to the CPU. There is the arithmetic logic unit (ALU), which performs arithmetic and logic operations, and the control unit (CU), which extracts instructions from memory and decodes and executes them, calling on the ALU when necessary. Like the RAM and GPU, the CPU is inserted into the motherboard.A CPU is measure in gigahertz (GhZ), and the more gigahertz the better. If you want your CPU to run faster than the set gigahertz, you can overclock it. Overclocking basically means pushing the CPU to its limit, then making the fan run faster so it does not overheat, but if you overclock it too much, it may overheat and break the CPU.
|
Power Supply
The power supply provides power to the whole computer, but you have to plug it into an outlet first! Since everything in the computer needs power, the power supply comes with many cords on the back. After you examine all of these cords, you can plug them into the motherboard and other parts, but you can't just plug them in anywhere! Each cord has its place to go, because they have different connectors. Another thing to think about with the power supply is watts, which is how much power is taken out of the wall outlet, and the more watts, the more advanced hardware you can put in your computer. If you had a very high power processor, but a very low wattage power supply, then the PC would not have enough power to run. Since wattage is a big factor in of building your computer, you should check on each component how many watts it needs to run smoothly.
|
RAM
RAM is an acronym for random access memory, a type of computer memory that can be accessed randomly. Random access memory is a computer storage location that allows information to be stored and accessed quickly from random locations within DRAM on a memory module. Because information is accessed randomly instead of sequentially like it is on a CD or hard drive, the computers can access the data much faster. As the computer boots up, parts of the operating system and drivers are loaded into the memory, which allows the CPU to process the instructions much faster, hence taking less time before your machine is operational. After the operating system has loaded, each program you open such as the browser you are using to view this page is loaded into the memory while it is loading.
|
GPU
GPU's are primarily used for 3-D applications, a graphics processing unit is a single-chip processor that creates lighting effects and transforms objects every time a 3-D scene is redrawn. These are mathematically-intensive tasks, which otherwise would put quite a strain on the CPU. Lifting this burden from the CPU frees up cycles that can be used for other jobs. A graphics processing unit is able to render images more quickly than a CPU because of it's parallel processing architecture, which allows it to perform multiple calculations at a time. The resulting performance improvements have made GPU's popular chips for other resource intensive tasks unrelated to graphics.
|
PC Case
Wifi CardHard DriveDisk Drive |
A computer case also known as a computer chassis, tower, system unit, cabinet, base unit or simply case, is the enclosure that contains most of the components of the computer. Cases can come in many different shapes and sizes.The most popular case size being the medium size case. You can customize it to what you want, add LED's if wanted or maybe a 45 mm fan.
The Wifi card is an optional component that can be installed into the computer. It is inserted on the motherboard. What this does is add the capability of connecting to a wireless router to get access to the internet. This is useful if you do want to be able to put your computer anywhere you want as long as it is range of the Wifi router. Laptops have Wifi cards already implanted into them so there is no need to buy one.
The hard drive, or HDD, stores everything on the computer. Everything you download, import, and save, is stored on the hard drive. Hard drives are classified by RPM, or revolutions per minute. This is how many times the hard drive spins every minute. The more RPM, the faster your computer writes to the hard drive. Another thing they are classified by is the write speed. This is how fast the computer writes data to the hard drive. The more RPM, the faster the write speed.
The disk drive is another optional component. As the name implies, you can insert disks into it. This is also one of the primary ways of installing an operating system onto your computer. It also can play movies if it is a DVD drive, too. Disk drives can burn music to empty disks. If you had a game that was a disk, all you would need to do is put it in the disk drive and follow the installation on the computer. Like everything else, the disk drive routes back to the motherboard.
|