The Inner Makings of a Computer
Monday, February 22nd, 2010 By now, computers should be an intricate part of your life. But many people may not know how a computer works from the inside. I will try to explain the basics of a home computer so some people can get a basic grasp of how a personal computer works. When you buy a computer, it comes in a neat little box that looks sleek and stylish. The screen is in pristine condition and the keyboard and mouse feel like they?ve never been touched by human fingers.
This is all well and good, but what about inside that little box that has been shrinking ever since the personal computer made its debut. The box used to be huge and the monitor would take up almost your entire desk. Now some computers don?t even have that box since the technology can be fit inside the thin and light flat screen monitor. The printed circuit board that used to be three times the size is now a tiny thin piece of technology. A PCB, as they call it, has all the fine tuned wiring and electrical that is needed for the computer to work. It also contains all the things that you are hopefully familiar with. The motherboard is the most important piece of the computer and that is also on printed circuit boards.
There are three other major components you should know about that make up the interior of a pc. Memory is one of those things. At this point, memory on a standard pc ranges from one gb to eight gb. This is what makes your computer go faster or slower. It also determines the amount of programs you can run without the computer slowing down or freezing too much. The higher the number, the more things you can do at once. Memory can also be found on flexible circuit boards on the inside of the personal computer.
The next component is the hard drive. These make up the space in the computer. You can store movies, files, pictures and everything else you desire. It also allows you to install programs that also take up space. The last major component is the CPU. This is a chip on the motherboard and the flexible PCBs that works as the brain of the computer. This is the chip that makes everything work. It sends the signals to everything else just like the human brain.
Hopefully this basic guide will help those who are a little behind the times to understand the pc.
