Motherboard - Printed circuit board, also known as a main board or logic board, that connects the CPU, RAM, HDD, ROM (such as optical drive), expansion slots (such as network card or graphics card), and input and output devices. Each motherboard has chips and controllers known as chipsets. The motherboard makes the other components in your system to work together. Like the central nervous system, where it sends all the information to where it needs to go.
BIOS – Basic Input/Output System – A boot firmware that contains all the code required to control the keyboard, display screen, disk drives, serial communications, and a number of miscellaneous functions.
Expansion Slot - An opening in a computer where a circuit board can be inserted to add new capabilities to the computer. Nearly all personal computers except portables contain expansion slots for adding more memory, graphics capabilities, and support for special devices.
Central Processing Unit – Also known as CPU for short, or processor. The CPU is the ‘brain' of the computer, therefore the most important part of the computer. It calculates and processes the software or program the user has told to run. So far, the max cores out there are 4. You won't be able to assign what core does what though. Depending on the application, some processor will run better than others. For example, normal web-browsing and listening to music will do fine with an single core, and comes close to performance compared to an quad-core (4 cores) because those apps does not require more than one core. But if you were to do video editing, then you will see noticeable performance in a quad-core than an single core because it is utilizing all the cores.
RAM – Short for Random Access Memory, also known as memory. A form of data storage, it allows the stored data to be accessed at any order, hence the word Random. RAM is like short-term memory, it keeps whatever needs to be remembered now, and forgets it later when something else comes up, such as exiting an existing program, and opening a new one. The more RAM you have, the better the computer runs. Depending on the operating system, there might be a limit on how much RAM your system can handle. For 32-bit systems, then the max would be 4GB, for 64-bit systems, then it would be limited to what your motherboard will hold.
Optical Drive/ROM – Short for Read Only Memory. Another type of data storage. It reads/write off CD, DVD, or Blu-Ray depending on the drive.
HDD – Short for Hard Disk Drive, or basically know as a Hard Drive. Also another type of data storage that reads and writes. It is non-volatile (can retain storage even when not powered) that stores the data on a rapidly rotating platters with a magnetic surface. Like long term memory, it keeps and never forgets whatever is on it until the user deletes/modify it, or something wrong happens.
Video Adapter – Either on-board, or separately occupying an expansion slot. The video adapter display and manipulate an output onto the display monitor. If it is on-board graphics card, then it takes sources from the CPU and RAM to function normally. Whereas the graphics card has its own processer and memory, making the computer run more efficiently. There are multiple kinds of video adapters out there. There's video adapters for normal uses, and video watching, gamers, and video editing. Of course, depending on what which one you buy, you will see improvements on what it is made for. For example, buying an expensive video editing card will be garbage when used to play video games.
PSU – Power Supply Unit, or Power Supply for short. It supplies power throughout the system. The amounts of watts depends on the system, if it supplies enough power, it would run without problems, if it's near the verge, then there would be errors and random crashes, and if it doesnt supply enough power, then the computer will not run at all.
Input Devices - Accessories and peripherals like mouse and keyboard
Output Devices - Accessories and peripherals like monitor and printer
Operating System - The most important program that runs on a computer. Every general-purpose computer must have an operating system to run other programs. Operating systems perform basic tasks, such as recognizing input from the keyboard, sending output to the display screen, keeping track of files and directories on the disk, and controlling peripheral devices such as disk drives and printers. Operating systems includes Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.
How the whole the system works together? When you press the power button, there is a cord connected from the case to the motherboard that signals the power is pressed and requires power. The power supply then supplies the power throughout the system, and everything turns on. Then it would send a signal to the video adapter displaying the whole process. The motherboard will first go to the floppy drive (if there is one), and read off of there if there is a floppy disk in there. If theres nothing, then it will go straight onto the optical drive. If there is as bootable disc, it would ask you to press a button to boot off of the disc. If you are to ignore or there isn't one in there, then it would go to the HDD next. This may be different depending on how you set it up in your BIOS. It would read off the HDD, get the required data, and the processor processes it, then puts some on the RAM for easy and faster access later. What I found cool, was that this is all done in binaries, binaries are a sequence of 1's and 0's.
