Basics : Knowing your PC parts

Lets start off with knowing the basics: hardwares of a computer.
A basic computer comes with various hardware parts which are often labelled as "specifications" or "specs" when you buy your new pc.

1. Motherboard
2. Hard Disk Drive (HDD)
3. Memory (RAM)4. Graphic/Video Card
5. Sound Card
6. Processor
7. Input/Output (I/O)
8. Optical Disk Drive (DVD/Blu-ray/CD)
9. Virtual Display Unit (Monitor)

These are the few basic hardware components of a PC that is required for it to work. With more and more people owning a computer, and better and faster computers appearing in the market, it is important to know exactly ,or if not roughly, how each part works. I will be explaining these in simple terms, so that most people who just started out will be able to understand.


1. Motherboard


Like most of the other electrical appliances such as TV, DVD players etc. Different parts of the computers are linked and made to work by this green board called motherboard. Putting it simply, a motherboard are equipped with many various slots for the other computer parts such as memory RAM to connect to it.




2. Hard Disk Drive (HDD)



Hard Drive is like your cabinet of document files in your office or home. All your data, documents music , etc are stored in it. You can check the size of the hard drive by going to Computer either on your desktop or start menu.
The size of a file are calculated by a unit called “bytes”. Often you see terms such as “kb”, “mb”, “gb”, “tb”, they all refer to “kilo-bytes”, “mega-bytes”, “giga-bytes”, “tera-bytes”.

In mathematical terms,
kilo: 10^3 (1000)
mega: 10^6 (1 000 000)giga: 10^9 (1 000 000 000)

It is kind of difficult to remember exactly how many zeros there are isn’t it? So to be able to remember them easily, just remember it as

1000 b (bytes) = 1kb
1000 kb = 1 mb
1000 mb = 1 gb
1000 gb = 1 tb

So when purchasing of choosing a new computer or hard drive, the easiest way is that the higher the number, the more things it will store. There are many other things to note such as data transfer rate, seek time etc. But these are off the basics, so I will explain next time.
On average, a word document file size is about 30 to 100 kb, a mp3 music file about 4mb, an avi. movie 600mb, HD mkv. movie about 4gb, games nowadays range from 2gb to 10gb. So when selecting your computer and hard drive, you must know the purpose of your computer, be it a gaming computer, a media computer, office computer, etc. All these factors should be considered.


3. Memory RAM


Memory is like a working table. Imagine a work desk with a cabinet at the side. This is how memory and hard drive works. When the user finds various files in the cabinet, he can place the files on his work desk, which allows him to access each and every one quickly and easily when he needs it again, without having to search through the large amount of data stored in the cabinet, saving large amount of time.The bigger the memory size, the bigger the work desk. This allows more application to run at the same time, allowing a computer to run much faster.



Memory RAMs are calculated in a similar way as Hard Disk Drive. Presently, computer memory RAMs are sold in forms of 256mb, 512mb, 1gb, 2gb, 4gb. Simply, it shows the size of the “work desk” each computer has. Since late 2008 and early 2009, a new generation of memory RAM, DDR3 is released. This generation of memory RAM provides 2 times the speed and consumes lower power as compared to DDR2.

On a personal view, the minimum memory RAM on Desktops that runs windows 7 is 1gb, and to make sure that u dun end up pulling your hairs out while waiting for your computer to respond, it is recommended that it should have 4gb of memory RAM.



Do note that 32-bit computers can only run up to 4gb of memory RAM, and 64-bit computers are recommended for computers with memory RAM of 4gb up to 8gb. For more information of 32-bit and 64-bit computers, do visit official Microsoft website: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/32-bit-and-64-bit-Windows-frequently-asked-questions

4. Graphic/Video Card



Graphic Card or Video Card is simple. Like what the name states, it is a component in a PC that generates images to your monitor or any other display. Nowadays, a desktop PC will have a Video Card capable of acceptable performance such as gaming and watching videos.

About 90% of the Video Card market is dominated by nVidia and ATI, with their line of GeForce and Radeon cards respectively. A video card has many components in it, such as 3D graphic rendering. Putting it into basic, a video card of a desktop should have VRAM of 512mb. As for notebooks, older notebooks use intel graphic chipset, which is an integrated graphics, and is low-performance. Such graphic processors are incapable of high graphic demands such as gaming.



A PC video output to a monitor comes in many different ports, such as S-Video, DVI, VGA, HDMI, Composite Video. Of all these components, VGA is the most common port used, and S-Video port is slowly stepping into history. With HDTVs more and more common now, most of the HDTVs are equipped with VGA ports, allowing a PC or laptop to be connected. If your PC could not be connected due to the difference in the port, fret not; there are always port adapters available in the pc store near you.

5. Sound Card

Like Video/Graphic Card, a sound card is a component of a PC which is in charge of the input and output sound signals. Many motherboards do provide built-in audio jacks, but many desktop PCs have expansion sound cards to boost the performance of sound reproduction through PCs. One of the most popular sound card makers will be Creative Technology which is based in Singapore.

Unlike video/graphic cards, there are lesser people who actually go for top-notch audio reproduction; hence, sound card specifications are often neglected. Sound cards come with a range of ports or some people will call it audio jacks. Each audio jack are ringed with different colours such as pink, green, blue, black etc. most common jacks will be pink, green and blue, which is microphone, line in and line out/headphone.

6. Processors

Processor of a PC is like the brain of a person. It is a small chip that is embedded on the motherboard. It is also commonly known to people as the “Pentium/core”, as Intel company names its line of processors Intel Pentium, Intel Dual Core, Intel Quad Core, Intel i7, etc.

Processor speed or clock rate is calculated in hertz which is the same as frequency. Hertz is the primary measurement unit to determine the performance of a processor. On average, a processor in an average desktop PC is approximately 2.4 GHz, with some as high as 3.8 GHz.

Like many other components of a PC, as the number value goes higher, a better performance is expected. But contrary to what most people believe, processor speed differences between a 3.0GHz processor and 2.6GHz processor of the same series will not really be felt by a regular user. Hence when selecting a processor, the generation or the series will be more important, as for the clock rate, a decent rate of 2.4GHz and above will be good enough for most users.

TBC...

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