Transcript Computer Systems

Computer Systems
Computer Hardware
What makes a computer (The Basics)
Cases
• A computer case is what holds majority of all
computer components.
• The computer cases are normally built from steel or
aluminum.
• Protect hardware from electro static discharge ESD
damage.
• They come in different sizes
• The size of the case is always determined by the
motherboard as this is the largest computer
component
Power Supply Unit (PSU)
• Supplies power to all the other computer
components.
• Converts the AC to DC
• Most PSU’s come with the ATX form factor which
was designed to make system components more
interchangeable.
• Can change the voltage level to 110v/115v or
220v/230v, if the wrong level is set this will damage
the PSU and other computer components in the
computer
• Comes in different wattage outputs, greater the
wattage, the more components it can power
Central processing Unit (CPU)
•
The CPU is the component that reads and
executes the instructions from the program of a
computer.
•
The CPU is refereed too as the“brain” of the
computer as this does all the thinking and
calculations.
•
The CPU understands one language “Binary”
•
The CPU is split into two components called ALU &
CU
•
•
The ALU performs arithmetic and logical
operations
•
The CU gets instructions and executes them
using the ALU when necessary.
A 2.6Ghz CPU can carry out 2.6 Billion Instructions
per clock cycle.
Motherboard
• The motherboard or the main board is the
main circuit board of a computer.
• Provides a meeting place for other hardware
components to connect and communicate.
with each other
• The motherboard has many chips including
the BIOS and CMOS.
• Divided into the northbridge and southbridge
• The northbridge is directly connected to
the CPU and is responsible for the RAM
and graphics.
• The southbridge is responsible for power
management, PCI buses,
SATA/USB/LAN, graphics card etc.
Hard Drive
• Stores user data and user software
• Commonly has an operating system and other
software and settings installed.
• non-volatile piece of hardware which is made up of
many rigid platters to store data.
• Connection method is using a SATA or IDE Cable(
IDE Redundant)
•
Hard drives can be easily damaged as they are
Electromagnetic and are susceptible to static
shocks.
• Measured in RPM (Rotation Per Minute)Higher the
speed, the faster the drive
Solid State Hard drive
• Faster than normal hard drives
• Uses NAND Technology (Flash)
• No moving components
• Shock resistant
• More expensive than standard hard drives
• Made up of memory blocks, which degrades over
time
Random Access Memory (RAM)
• RAM is volatile memory
• Faster the RAM the quicker a program can load.
• The more RAM in a computer, the more
programs a computer can have open at anyone
time.
• Static and Dynamic
• Dynamic RAM (DRAM) needs to be
refreshed thousands of times
• Static (SRAM)does not need to refresh as
much making it faster.
• DRAM is the most common used RAM as SRAM
is very expensive.