Components of a Computer

A computer has internal and external components. The external or

physical components are those that we can see and touch, while the
internal or intangible components are the programs and applications
that run on the computer. The internal components of a computer
include the motherboard, processor, RAM, internal hard drive, power
supply, graphics card, and sound card. Below we will talk in detail
about them.
If you are a technology, video game, graphic design or video editing
enthusiast, you know how important it is to have a good computer.
Nowadays there are hundreds of options to acquire powerful and
personalized computers, however, many of these alternatives are really
expensive and sometimes the components are not the most suitable
for our needs, it is for this and some other reasons that more and more
enthusiasts . of computing choose to build their own equipment.
Parts of a Computer:
Monitor
main board
Power supply
Expansion cards and slots
Microprocessor (CPU) and socket
One RAM module and three slots
Optical disc drive (CD; DVD; BD)
Hard drive or solid state drive
It may seem quite complex to you but you would be surprised how
simple it is and how much you will save by building your own PC
instead of buying one already made.

Surely your main doubts about building your own PC are: What
challenges does it entail? What do you need to know to do it? And
most importantly, what are the components of a computer?

Read on and discover everything you need to know to build or upgrade

your PC.

Have you ever wondered what's inside a computer? If you have

decided to build your own PC or just want to learn more about it, it is
important to know the different components that make our computer
work.
The components of a computer can be classified into internal and
external components. Within the internal components of a PC we will
find:

The motherboard or motherboard

This is the element that connects all the other components of a
computer. It is a piece of printed circuit that has slots or sockets where
the processor, memory and expansion cards (such as video, sound or
network cards) are inserted.
Motherboard manufacturers
Several manufacturers share the motherboard market, such as:
Advantech, Albatron, Aopen, ASUS, AsRock, Biostar, Chaintech, Dell,
DFI, ECS EliteGroup, FIC, Foxconn, Gigabyte Technology, iBase, iEi,
Intel, Lenovo, MSI , Pc Chips, Sapphire Technology, Super Micro,
Tyan, VIA, XFX, Zotac.

Some design and manufacture one or more motherboard components,

while others assemble components that third parties have designed
and manufactured.
The processor or CPU
It is the brain of our computer. It is responsible for executing the
instructions that come to it from the operating system and the
programs. Its speed is measured in gigahertz (GHz), which indicates
the number of operations it can perform per second. The higher the
processor speed, the faster the computer will run.

Silicon processors
The manufacturing process of a microprocessor is very complex. The
silicon necessary to build it is usually extracted from sand (basically
composed of quartz, that is, silicon dioxide), with which a single crystal
of about 20 x 150 centimeters is manufactured. To do this, the material
in question is melted at a high temperature (1370 °C) and very slowly
(10 to 40 mm per hour) and thus the glass is formed.

From this glass, weighing hundreds of kilos, the ends and the outer
surface are cut to obtain a perfect cylinder. The cylinder is then cut into
10-micron-thick wafers (one-tenth the thickness of a human hair) using
a diamond saw. Thousands of wafers are obtained from each cylinder,
and several hundred microprocessors will be manufactured from each
wafer.
RAM memory
It is a small card with circuits, computers can have one or more RAM
memories and its function is to temporarily store the data and
instructions that the processor needs to function.
Its main design and manufacturing headquarters is located in Fountain
Valley, California. Each product originates from the engineering
department, where they are developed, Kingston manufactures
memory that conforms to industry standards and also designs its own
non-standard devices.
The power source
It is the component that manages how much energy reaches our
computer. This device regulates electrical energy and safely powers
the components of our PC.
In the hardware world, it is not too common for brands to make their
own products. In particular, we will focus on discovering who are the
most common power supply manufacturers on the market, and what
brands they manufacture for. We will also see which brands
manufacture their own products and what types of companies can be
found otherwise. Let's start!
External components of a computer
Both desktop PCs and laptops require external components that allow
us to interact with the computers. These components are:

A screen
A keyboard
A mouse or trackpad (or touchpad) for laptops

computer screen
The function of the PC screen is quite obvious: it is to display the
graphics and texts that are generated by the processor.

The PC screen can have different sizes, resolutions and technologies,

which influence the quality and performance of the image. The screen
may vary in size and is calculated in inches with respect to the
diagonal.

A laptop can have a very compact screen: about 10 inches. Desktop

computers are at least 15 inches and can reach 27 inches or more if
the user opts for a television screen.

Resolutions and prices also vary: for a 24-inch screen, for example, the
resolution is 1920 pixels by 1080, or high definition. The displays are
connected with VGA, DVI or HDMI.

Count at least 2,000 pesos for a quality screen. Discover here

everything you need to know about computing.
♦ Acer: It is a Taiwanese company that produces computers and
computer products. It is the second largest computer manufacturer in
the world and the largest computer retail company in Taiwan. Acer's
product offering spans PCs, servers and storage, monitors, peripherals
and Internet presence solutions for enterprise, government, education,
and home users.

♦ ASUS: It is a company based in Taiwan (Republic of China),

dedicated to the production of motherboards (motherboards), graphics
cards, optical devices, PDAs, laptops, hardware products for network
management, cell phones, tablets, computer cases and computer
cooling systems. Its shares are listed on the London Stock Exchange
and the Taiwan Stock Exchange.

Apple: It is an American multinational company that designs and

produces electronic equipment and software, with headquarters in
Cupertino (California, United States) and another small one in Dublin
(Ireland). Among the company's best-known hardware products are
Macintosh computers, the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

computer keyboard
It is used to write text and thus communicate with the computer.
Keyboards usually have about a hundred keys: letters of the alphabet,
numbers, accents, and special keys. It is the descendant of the
typewriter.

There are several types of keyboard: wired or wireless, with or without

a numeric keypad, with additional functions...
Keyboards vary by language: in Mexico we use the QWERTY
keyboard (first letters present on the keyboard), as in the United States
and most other countries in the world, but for example, in France they
use the AZERTY keyboard.

Expect around $300 for a simple, quality keyboard.

The computer mouse or trackpad

With it you can move the cursor (arrow) on the screen, point to
elements and select them by clicking.

Currently, mice are equipped with a displacement sensor, usually

optical or laser. Mice can be wired or wireless (in this case, you have to
connect a wireless receiver to a USB port on the computer).

On laptops, the mouse is not mandatory, since they have a touchpad

located next to the keyboard that fulfills this function.

The mouse has two buttons for clicking, double-clicking, or right-

clicking and a scroll wheel for scrolling down the web page or word
processor.
The computer hard drive
Its role is to store computer data. The hard drive contains all the
information on our PC, from the operating system such as Windows,
macOS or Linux to the programs and the user's personal data.

A hard drive stores information in binary form. Currently they are

capable of storing several Terabytes of data (that is, 1024 gigabytes),
which corresponds to hundreds of thousands of photographs,
thousands of movies, millions of text documents...

What you should know is that there are several types of hard drives:

HDD mechanical hard drives: contain mechanical parts including a

read head that points to the magnetic disks and reads and writes data.
SSD hard drives: without a mechanical part, they read data more
quickly, ideal for storing the operating system and high-performance
programs.
External hard drives: to have a backup copy of the computer and its
internal hard drive.
The cost of a hard drive varies depending on its capacity. There are
from 240GB to
10 Terabytes (10,000 GB).

They cost at least $200 for a quality mouse.