Computer Hardware Components
Hardware refers to all components which are needed to operate a PC. These various components can be built into or plugged into a PC. The most important part of any PC is the operating system. All other hardware that you may use with your computer is based on this one piece of hardware.
Computer hardware consists of all the electronic components of a personal computer, including the hard disk, processor, main memory, video card, hard drive, optical drive, Ethernet cable and wireless card. PC processors have high-performance non-volatile architectures that store data and instructions that are executed inside a multi-core processor. A chip can control up to hundreds of individual hardware devices. Each hardware device is assigned a special function by the PC operating system.
Every computer hardware consists of three different types: motherboards, processors, and hard disk drives. Motherboards are the physical components that connect all the other computer hardware. It also contains sockets for connecting external devices such as printers. The physical size of a motherboard is generally determined by the desktop size of the user. Most modern motherboards are dual core and feature an automatic timing mechanism that helps it to overclock a PC based on the temperature of the environment.
One of the computer hardware components is the CPU or central processing unit. The CPU performs the execution of instructions stored in the form of program code. The operation of the CPU is controlled by a microprocessor that is embedded inside the CPU. A microprocessor can execute multiple tasks simultaneously and helps in providing smooth execution of commands.
The other most important and widely used computer hardware components are graphics card or graphics unit (AGP), hard disk, RAM, random access memory or RAM modules, sound card and network interface cards. The AGP in a CPU is the part of the CPU that handles communication with external peripherals like a mouse or a keyboard. Hard disk is the storage medium for all the data, software and operating system that are required in order to run a computer system.
Random Access Memory or RAM is the main memory in a CPU that can be accessed through the CPU’s clock and the RAM operates in a random manner in which it accesses data from main memory and retrieves data from the RAM at a later time. It is found in many different types like the Single mode and the multi-mode. Hard disk drives are also important hardware components. They are generally used in multimedia applications like the Movie recorders or the DVD players. In a computer system motherboard is one of the most important pieces of hardware.
