Neutron2K's Computing Tutorials

Guide to Inside Your Computer

Have you ever wondered just whats inside your computer that makes it work? Ever heard someone talk about graphics cards or sound cards and had no idea what their talking about? Well nows your chance to find out. This guide will provide you with basic information on all the key hardware thats inside your computer so that next time you hear a PC technical conversation, you can join in!

As you have probably guessed, theres more to your computer than a mouse and keyboard, and obviously its sat inside that omnious box under your desk. You've heard people talk about motherboards, graphics cards, sound cards, ram, processors and hard drives and you havn't got the foggiest idea what their talking about.

A lot of the components inside your PC are optional. Some PC's will have a slightly different hardware setup and may not have as many components inside that another does. Below is a list of the minimum hardware you will find inside a modern PC.

Motherboard

The motherboard is a big circuit board that sits attached to a panel inside the computers case. It is one of the most talked about components of a computer as every single item you connect to your computer, is connected through the motherboard. It is joint first most important piece of hardware inside your computer, along with the central processing unit (CPU).

Motherboards, (also called a mainboard), have various slots and connectors. The most basic motherboard will have internal connectors for at least the following:

1 x Central Processor
2 x IDE Channels (for upto 4 IDE hard-drives, CD Drives, DVD Drives and various others)
2 x Memory Socket for expandable Random Access Memory (RAM)
1 x Floppy Drive Control (for upto 2 floppy disk drives)
PCI Expansion Slots or additional hardware.

All of these features will be described below.

Most motherboards will come with the following external connectors for external peripherals:

1 x PS2 Keyboard port
1 x PS2 Mouse Port
1 x Parallel Printer Port
2 x USB ports.

Some motherboards also come with an 'on-board' graphics chip and sound chip. In these instances, your monitor and speakers will be connected via connectors provided by the motherboard and these will be located at the top of the computer along with the ports mentioned above. More about these on-board processors are detailed further down the page.

The Central Processing Unit (CPU)

A CPU is the second of the most important pieces of hardware inside your PC. The CPU is what carries out everything you do with your computer, and every thing that the other parts of the computer do. Its a very busy little unit. When you press key on your keyboard, or move your mouse slightly, and instruction is passed to the Central Processor by the Motherboards Input Controller. When you open a file on your computer, numerous instructions are sent to the processor so it can tell the storage media the file is located on to prepare the file for viewing etc.

There are many different CPUs around these days, mainly developed by Intel and AMD - the worlds biggest leading manufacturers of CPUs.

Most computers will only have one CPU, but there are Motherboards that support the use of 2 or more Identical Processors. Multiple processor systems are extremely quick. A CPU can only deal with one instruction at a time, and altough processing speeds these days are nearing the 4GHz mark on 32bit processors, having 2 CPU's speeds things up considerably. The only drawback with multiple CPUs is that your software needs to support Multiple processors in order to use them both.

If you think having 2 CPUs is a bit greedy, then have a look at some of the massive web servers and military computers. Some computers are known to have in access of 10 Central Processing Units!

The biggest thing with CPU's recently, is that of the 64Bit processors. Without getting too technical, 64Bit processors are much more efficiant than the usual 32Bit processors and thus are a lot quicker. Again tho, in order to use your 64Bit Processor to its fullest you need software that supports 64Bit processors. Dont worry tho if you havn't got 64 bit software, your 64bit processor will run as an emulated 32bit processor with amazing speed. For Example, AMD's Athlon 64bit 3200 processor runs at 2.0GHz which is the equivilent of an Intel Pentium for 3.4GHz. Fast isnt it.

Processor speeds are measure in mega-hertz (MHz), and more often now Giga-Hertz (GHz), (theres a 1024MHz to 1GHz).

Another part of a CPU is its Cache. As mentioned above, a processor can only deal with one instruction at a time - so where does the rest of the instructions go when the processor is busy? Well the answer to that one is the processors cache. Processors are now available with upto 2-4MB of l2 cache. Very fast stuff.

Any instructions that cannot fit into the CPU's Cache is then held in the computers RAM until space is available to transfer it to the CPU's Cache, and then onto the processor.

Random Access Memory (RAM)

RAM. Theres a big buzz-word. Next to CPU speed, RAM is somthing that a lot of people use as a comparison against other peoples computers. 'Well my computer has 512MB of RAM and yours only has 64MB so mines better than yours!' is a good example, but its also untrue. Like everything with computer components, theres more than just one type of Computer Memory.

In the old days there was ECO. Then there was DRAM. Then SDRAM. Then DDR. Now theres DDR2. I wont go into great detail on this subject. The difference between these RAM technology can be summed up in one word. Speed. Everything in a computer sooner or later comes down to speed, and RAM speed is a vital part of a fast computer. The fast RAM can take instructions in and pass them out again is a key factor. So just because someone has more ram than you, doesnt mean their computer is better. They might have slower RAM than what you have.

Graphics Card

A Graphics card is the piece of hardware inside your computer that puts the images onto your monitor. Its what shows you evyerthing. Without one, you wouldnt have a clue what was going on with your computer you wouldnt be able to see it.

Your computer might not have a seperate graphics card. Instead, it might have a built in graphics chip on the motherboard which takes on the role of a graphics card. The difference between a graphics card and an on-board graphics chip is that a graphics card has its own processor and its own memory where as an on-board graphics card has to share the computers RAM and CPU. This makes its a slower than a seperate graphics card.

Graphics Cards come in different Types such as PCI, AGP, and PCI-E (The newest and fastest). All this means basically is the type of slot the graphics card will go into. You can find vast amounts of information about graphics card interfaces on the internet. I wont go into them here.

When you buy a new Graphics card, you will need to know what type of expansion slots your motherboard has. If you only have PCI slots on your motherboard, then you can only use a PCI graphics card etc.

Sound Card

In essence, a sound card is the exact same thing as a graphics card, only it deals with sound and not graphics and video. With out a sound card or an on-board sound chip in your computer, you wont hear any sounds from it.

There was a time way back then when computers just went beep using an internal speaker. Ahhh it was a simpler time, (i'm only 23!). Having a sound card used to be an in thing. If you didn't have one you wernt classed as having a decent computer. Now a days every computer comes with either a sound card or an on-board sound chip.

The difference between a sound card and an on-board sound chip is the same as for the graphics card. On-board is slower as it shares the computers main RAM and processor, while a sperate card provides its own.

Sound cards are also whats responsible for handling game controllers such as joysticks and game pads, through the 15pin Game port connector. However this is becoming increasingly irrelevant with the invention of USB Game Controllers. Their faster and offer a lot more functionality than that of the old ways.

Hard Disk Drive and CD Drives.

The final most essential components of a computer are a Hard Drive and a CD drive. A Hard drive is required so that youc omputer computer can hold its operating system (like Windows), and your other software and personal data files. Without one your computer wouldnt boot or do anything, even if you have everything listed above.

CD's are optional really, unless you want to install new software. Everything these days is done via a CD. Software is too big for floppy disks these days. Without these, your PC will do little but sit there.