Hardware

System unit

System box

For 3 main things:
1. Protection from outside harm
2. Safety - for you from electric shocks and for the system from damage from static electricity
3. Cooling - to prevent the system from overheating and burning out. This uses fans or watercooling to create air flow to cool down specific parts of the hardware




















Processor:

The CPU is more like a very powerful calculator that can calculate billions of calculations every second and because it does this so fast it does in fact look very intelligent. Everything you do on your computer is processed by the CPU.The faster the CPU is the faster it can process calculations. Every CPU does the same thing, but it is better to have a faster CPU so it can process tasks that need to be processed faster. If you use your PC for word processing, internet, email and other basic tasks you don’t need such a powerful CPU but if you are going to use your PC for gaming or graphics design you going to have a fast CPU to processes calculations.
 


RAM:

Random access memory (RAM) is the best known form of computer memory. RAM is considered "random access" because you can access any memory cell directly if you know the row and column that intersect at that cell. RAM has different slits in the top to plug in so if the slits don't match the computor you can't use that RAM



Motherboard

The motherboard is a printed circuit board that is the foundation of a computer and allows the CPU, RAM, and all other computer hardware components to function and communicate with each other. If this doesn't work then nothing will work



Hard drive

Alternatively referred to as a hard disk drive and abbreviated as HD or HDD, the hard drive is the computer's main storage media device that permanently stores all data on the computer. It consists of one or more hard drive platters inside of air sealed casing. Most computer hard drives are in an internal drive bay at the front of the computer and connect to the motherboard using either ATA, SCSI, or a SATA cable and power cable.



Graphics card

This takes the binary generated by the CPU and produces pictures from it onto your computor monitor. This allows the computor to know where put each pixel in order to show an image. This is an important part of gaming systems. If the graphics card is low capacity then the game will have poor graphics and vice versa.




Power supply unit (PSU)

This switches the current from AC (alternating current) to DC (direct current) so the motherboard isn't fried by a high ampage and to run the processor and peripheral devices































BIOS

This is a chip located in the motherboard which contains information to how your computor should operate and ensures everything is there and in working order






Peripheral devices

Camera - Takes pictures - Can connect to USB

Keyboard - Used to type - Can connect to USB, pin DIN

Mouse - Used to controll the curser so you can do things on the computor - USB

Head phones - To listen to things - USB, audio jack

Mic - To record voice etc - USB, audio jack

Joystick - To play games - USB

Monitor - To see what you are doing - VGA, S-Video, DV-I, HDMI

Speakers - To listen to things - USB, Audio jack

Printer - To print things - USB, parallel

TVscreen - To watch TV - coaxial, composite, component, DVI, HDMI


Storage

Magnetic storage -  A disc that stores data using tiny magnetised dots. These are created, read and erased using the magnetic fields created by very small electromagnets. Used for floppy dics or hard drive. For these the dots are arranged in circles on the surface of a disc with a magnetisable coating.

Solid state storage (SSD) - Used for hard drives and USB sticks. This is based on electronic storage with no moving parts. These store data using flash memory. This is a type of electronically-erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM)

Optical storage - For CD, DVD, BLURAY. These use patterns of tiny dots that can be read by a laser.
Operating systems:



User interface - This allows people to interact with the computor
Application management -
Hardware management - Checks all the hardware and makes sure it works
Device driver - Make the hardware do it's job
Manages resources -
File management -
Security -
Customisation - You can customise it if you don't like how it looks



Disc clean up - This will show you what files you can delete to free up space on your computor

Defrag - Computors will  fragment data, this is splitting up a file into different parts to make it fit, Defragmentation will put all these files back together to make them load faster. However this can take a long time. Whereas if you do this frequently (e.g. once a week) then it will take significantly shorter amounts of time

Formatting

Back-up - This makes a copy of all your files incase you lose your original copy so you will always have a copy

Connection types
PATA
SATA
SCSI
VSTB
eSATA
Firewire



Hypothetical scenario

Map design, old computers, throw away, update, replace. Reasons why.