BN2012

Others called it the CPU. But its actually more than that. The tall tower case beside your monitor, or under your computer table, might look just like an ordinary PC case. But what it really is can be much like the hood of a car. And however the hood looks, what really matters is what is under it.

A PC user should be somehow knowledgeable of what’s inside the case. It will help him a lot to know the basic components of his machine especially when he’s upgrading. So let us pop up the hood and let us take a closer look on the parts in which your system is made of…

1) Motherboard – This is the computer’s main circuit board that connects all internal components. This is usually a huge and flat rectangular thing that’s screwed on the side of your case. It looks like all the common circuit boards on other electronic devices with all the ICs, resistors, and capacitors but it is much more than that. The difference is that a PC’s motherboard is quite expandable as you can add other circuit boards to it like the graphics card and the sound card.

The motherboard is the skeletal system of your machine. It is the backbone of your PC. It determines the upgrade capabilities and limitations of your unit. Try to read the documentation that comes with it to get a pretty good picture of the modifications that you can do with it.

2) Central Processing Unit (CPU) – The real CPU is a small square silicon chip that’s inserted on the main processor area of the motherboard. It usually comes with a heat sink and a fan, as the CPU along with the graphics card, are the two main culprits as to why a PC becomes so hot inside if your using it.

The CPU is the brain behind your system. It is the one who’s really doing much of the computing physically. It contains way lot of switches by which it processes all of the data being put into it.

3) The RAM – The Random Access Memory is a temporary storage for information that the computer is currently using in its processes. It looks like a rectangular stick that’s inserted on a RAM slot in the motherboard.

RAM is much like your office desk. At the start of your work, you gather up all the files (from the filing cabinet perhaps) that’s needed to do things. You do want that every available data and material is essentially available and within your arms reach when your working. It helps you do things more easy and fast. While in the middle of a task, the CPU places in the RAM all the related data that’s needed for that specific task. After a day’s work, you’ll essentially clean up your desk and placed all the papers in your drawer or on the filing cabinet again.  In that manner, all data on the RAM pertaining to a specific application will be erased after you closed that application.

Along with the CPU, the higher the RAM specification, the higher the chance for your PC not to crash or hang in the middle of an intensive computer operation.

4)  The Hard Disk – is a permanent and large capacity storage that’s able to hold a wide array of information and data. It is a heavy rectangular object about a hand’s size and is connected to the IDE or SATA controller on your motherboard. While data on the hard disk is both read and write, it doesn’t loose anything stored in it even after you turn off your PC. This is directly opposite to the RAM.  The setback is that hard disks are slower in data access than the RAM.

Think of the hard disk as the filing cabinet where you put all the office papers and documents for a more permanent storage.

5) The ODD or the Optical Disc Drive is the thing where you put your discs on for the computer to read the data in it. It is usually place on the front side of your PC case and has an eject/push button. Old PCs have CD Roms on them, while the newer ones have DVD Roms. The ones that are being released more recently do have Blu-ray Roms.

The two primary uses of ODDs are for multimedia purposes (audio and video) and for data backup use.

6) The Graphics Card – Is an add on and a smaller circuit board that’s placed on an AGP or a PCI Express slot on the motherboard. It also contains a processor, a GPU instead of a CPU, which unloads the CPU of its extra work on processing graphics data. A dedicated Graphics card immensely helps the CPU concentrate on other processing tasks. This greatly improves the over all function of your PC in return.

A better graphics card means a better visual experience for the user.

There are other add on circuit boards like the sound card, the LAN card, and a TV Tuner that’s worth the mention. But nowadays, these things do come integrated with the motherboard that most everyday PC users would not even think of buying them apart from the motherboard.

7) The Power Supply - a power supply unit (PSU) is a PC component that supplies power to the other components in a computer. More specifically, a power supply unit is typically designed to convert general-purpose alternating current (AC) electric power to usable low-voltage DC power for the internal components of the computer. Some power supplies have a switch to change between 230 V and 115 V. Other models have automatic sensors that switch input voltage automatically, or are able to accept any voltage between those limits.

The PSU is the steel box on the top back edge of the PC case that comes with a fan. It is where you plug in the one end of the power chord before you plug the other end on a power outlet. Yours would probably be a 500 watts PSU as it is the most common these days. Nonetheless, there’s always a chart of some kind sticked on your PSU for you to know its wattage.

I guess it’s not that hard to remember the major components inside the desktop tower. Just remember that a failure on any of these does not necessarily mean the failure of your whole system. The system might temporarily not turn on, but once a knowledgeable person replaces the bad parts, your PC will start again and you’ll have a good time just like before, on doing the things that you love doing with it.