How Computers Work

Today, I shall explain how computers work. There are 8 main parts in a computer and these are: Case, PSU, Ram, Hard drive, motherboard, optical drives, CPU and cooling.

The case: The case is where the motherboard, hard disks some fans, optical drives and PSU go. The Motherboard is held in with 6-8 screws (6 for m-ATX and 8 for ATX). The case has to be strong otherwise it leaves the components open to damage.

The PSU: The PSU or Power Supply Unit also mounts in the case and is held in by four screws. All PSU’s are different. They differ from wattage, CPU Power pins, and motherboard power pins. For the CPU power there are 4 or 8 pins. (8 for extreme editions or K series and 4 for standard). And there is 20 and 24-pin Motherboard connector. Most modern motherboards use 24-pin so that isn’t really a problem.

Ram: Ram or Random Access Memory is fitted onto the motherboard. There are 3 types of Ram, These are: DDR, DDR2 and DDR3. DDR3 is the most modern, is the fastest and also is the cheapest to buy. A Motherboard only supports one of these though. The more Ram you have the faster your computer will be.

Hard Drive: The hard drive is where the computer saves all of the downloads, Operating system, your personal files and anything else you save. The more Gigabytes or GB you have the more data you can save. There are two different types of hard drive, SSD or solid state drive and HDD or hard disk drive. (Will be explained in a future post) Your hard drive uses a connection called SATA or Serial ATA. SSD’s have no moving parts so are faster in data access than HDD’s.

Motherboard: The motherboard is where all of the devices connect to one way or another, either by a cable or by being sat on the motherboard i.e. Ram. There are many brands of motherboard like ASUS, Gigabyte and ASrock etc… Without it, tour PC wont even POST as it can’t do anything.

Optical Drives: Optical drives are for reading/burning data to a type of optical media i.e. CD. The drives are quite cheap to pick up so if your needing one it wound set you back more that £30.

CPU: The CPU or processor is what the computer uses to process your commands. The faster your CPU runs at, the quicker your PC will be. CPU speed is measured in GHZ. Another ting with processors it the amount of cores it has. For example a dual fore CPU has 2 processors on 1 chip.

Intel has thing called ‘Hyper Threading’. What it does is make a PC think the CPU has x2 as many cores as it has, making it run faster.