We all have a home computer, be it a laptop or a desktop PC, Mac or Windows, bought all together or assembled. Even without having to be a computer technician, it can be useful and interesting to know what is inside each computer, what parts it is made of and what all those acronyms made of English terms mean, often very shortened.
To get an overview of the main components of a modern computer, let's see piece by piece, what is there, what they do, brief history and important specifications that you need to know and understand to be super prepared when buying a new PC or if something breaks and you have to fix it .
1) The Processor or CPU
CPU stands for Central Processing Unit and is considered, in fact, the brain of a computer.
In reality it is not so much the brain of the computer as the computer in the most literal sense of the word.
The CPU is the part that processes and makes calculations in order to receive each given command, for example by pressing a mouse button, which is converted into binary and sent to the CPU.
A processor performs a series of simple mathematical operations thousands of times per second and is able to provide results that the human mind would be able to obtain only after so much effort and time.
The first CPU manufacturer was Intel, which is still the market leader for processors today.
The dawn of the modern personal computer can be said to have begun with the release, in 1978, of one of the first 16-bit chips, the Intel 8086 microprocessor, from which the first Pentium processors will derive.
A CPU looks like a kind of plate inside which there are billions of transistors, that is, tiny silicon circuits capable of switching or amplifying an electrical signal.
The power of a CPU depends, roughly said, on the number of transistors in its circuit.
Above the CPU there is always a fan that cools it down when in use so that the circuits do not burn out during the calculations.
PC manufacturers do not characterize their computers by indicating the number of transistors on the CPU, but by clock speed and number of cores .
Clock speed measures how many operations a CPU can do per second.
A multi-core CPU has multiple processors on a single chip (the dual-core has two processors, a quad-core four and so on).
The advantage of a multi-core CPU is that multiple tasks can be done in parallel, but it's not that a quad-core is four times faster than a single-core CPU, although it will still be faster.
In general, the higher the clock speed, the faster the CPU and the more cores there are, the more tasks it can do simultaneously.
When two CPUs have similar clock speeds and the same number of cores, there are other differentiating factors such as cache size.
The cache is the memory where the CPU can store instructions and it is obvious that the more, the better.
The problem with judging the performance of a CPU is that it also depends on how applications are developed and it is not said that they will be able to take advantage of the cores to run faster.
For example, a mid-level dual-core processor may be faster than a more expensive quad-core processor in doing certain operations.
So if you are buying a new computer, it is better to choose it based on what you want to do, without thinking that the more you spend the better.
The world's leading CPU manufacturers are Intel, AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) and VIA Technologies.
The Intel processors of the iCore series are currently the best and cost more, although this has not always been the case (In the early 2000s AMD chips were superior to Intel)
For other devices such as smartphones, the CPU is normally integrated with some of the other components on a single chip and the best known manufacturers are Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Samsung.
READ ALSO: Buy the processor or CPU of the computer; what you need to know
2) Motherboard
If you are assembling a new computer, the motherboard is one of the most important components to choose from while on the other hand, if you buy one already ready, the motherboard will hardly be mentioned in the specification sheet.
The motherboard is the printed circuit board (PCB) that connects all the components together.
In fact it is a set of ports and connectors (or sockets) such as USB, HDMI, SATA etc.
Before the invention of the microprocessor, the idea that a computer could fit on a single PCB was considered unrealistic because its components were too large, then, with the microprocessor, it was possible to house a computer interior inside a small case. .
Motherboards do not have a big impact on a computer's performance, however they determine the type of components that can be included and therefore indirectly determine the capabilities of a computer.
The size of the motherboards can vary a lot and, simply said, the bigger it is, the more ports and connectors there are.
If you want to make an extremely powerful computer, you will need multiple attacks to connect various video cards, various disks and RAM memories.
A basic PC can have a much smaller motherboard instead, with fewer add-ons.
Most motherboards have a number of standard ports: CPU sockets, RAM slots, disk cable connection ports, fan sockets, USB ports, audio and video connectors, and PCIe slots for external devices, the network.
PCIe slots have different sizes depending on whether they are x1, x4, x8 or x16; for example powerful video cards need a PCIe x16 slot, while a wireless card of an x4 or even x1.
When buying an RA M card you must first have a good idea of which computer you are going to build.
Motherboards may or may not support certain types and speeds of RAM, some HDDs / SSDs or different types of CPUs.
As for the size and expandability you have to look at your needs so, for example if you want to use two video cards in parallel, it will take a minimum of two PCIe x16 slots.
The main motherboard manufacturers are ASUS and Gigabyte Technology which make them of various formats for Intel and AMD CPUs with different port combinations.
READ ALSO: How a motherboard is made
3) RAM (Random Access Memory)
RAM is the memory where the CPU stores data that presumably will have to work soon.
RAM differs from a hard disk or storage medium in terms of data speed and residence time.
RAM is fast memory, where data can be read quickly while a disk is always much slower.
At the same time, data remains on RAM memory only as long as the computer is turned on, and then automatically empties when it is turned off.
For the CPU, it can be 100, 000 times faster to access RAM data than it does on the hard drive.
The information needed to keep a program running (for example while writing to a Word document) is copied to RAM, although in order not to lose this information it is necessary to save it on the hard disk.
This is why you lose your files when your computer crashes or if there is no power.
If the RAM runs out of space, the computer slows down drastically and the CPU has to take information from the disks which are much slower.
Insufficient RAM is a major cause of computer slowdown.
When buying a RAM, the cards describe several features .
First of all the capacity that is measured in gigabytes.
The more gigabytes there are, the better it is even if you have to stay within the limits of the operating system.
As a rule, for example, 32-bit Windows does not support more than 4GB of RAM.
In general, you will hardly need more than 8 GB of RAM, unless you work with video editing or if you use the computer for more modern video games.
In the past ten years, there have been three generations of RAM: DDR, DDR2 and DDR3, with DDR4 already in preparation.
Each generation has doubled the data transfer rate compared to the previous one.
When buying a new RAM card, it is important to check which model is supported by the computer.
Transmission speed is measured in MHz and is limited by the motherboard.
DDR3 RAM has a speed between 1066 and 2400 MHz and a clock speed normally between 133 MHz and 300 MHz.
Another value for judging the performance of a RAM is the number of clock cycles it takes to return the data requested by the user.
The lower the number of cycles, the faster the data is returned.
The largest RAM manufacturers are Samsung (which however sells them to other manufacturers rather than consumers), Corsair, Kingston and Crucial.
4) Disc
The computer disk can be today a hard disk (HDD) or a solid state disk (SSD).
About this we wrote, in another article, differences and advantages between SSD and HDD hard drives.
The disk is where data and files are stored permanently.
While the hard disk is more like a turntable, the SSD is similar to RAM, with the difference that the data remains in memory even in the absence of power.
SSDs are therefore much faster than hard drives, more expensive, with lower capacities.
The SSD also consumes less energy and is also used in smartphones, especially for its resistance to magnets that instead erase data on the hard disk (degauss it).
It is easy to imagine that, in the future, SSDs will completely replace hard drives.
For the moment, the ideal for a computer is to have both: an SSD for the operating system and a large hard drive for storing files.
For disks, the most important specification is, of course, the capacity measured in gigabytes (GB) or even in terabytes (TB).
HDDs also have different rpm speeds, between 5400 and 7200 rpm.
The faster the disk spins, the more data can be read and the faster the computer goes.
Most hard drives are manufactured by three companies: Seagate, Western Digital and Toshib a.
The big SSD manufacturers are the same with the addition of SanDisk, Crucial, Corsair and Samsung .
5) GPU Graphics Card
The Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) is a microprocessor like the CPU, specialized in showing graphic images.
GPUs are of two main types: integrated and PCIe video card.
The integrated graphics card, like Intel HD Graphics, is built into the CPU.
The PCIe video card is much larger, has its own cooling system, dedicated RAM memory and is mounted on a motherboard PCIe slot.
Before the computers had a graphical interface (like that of Windows or Mac), where nothing but letters and a flashing cursor on a black background appeared on the screen, the CPU was more than enough to do all the work.
With the evolution of operating systems, it has become indispensable to work images, especially in 3D, on a specialized processor.
In modern computers, the GPU, in addition to processing the graphics of programs and games, also provides acceleration for the CPU, in order to increase the overall performance of the computer.
The main GPU manufacturers are NVIDIA and AMD (which has taken over ATI), while Intel is the main integrated GPU manufacturer.
NVIDIA and AMD also sell their graphics chips to other manufacturers such as ASUS or Gigabyte who then mount them on their graphics cards.
In general, unless you use your PC for video games, a mid-level GPU is more than enough for every need.
6) In this article we leave out other components that make up a computer.
For sure, inside a computer there are the power supply and the fans, which are absolutely essential, while everything else, such as the Wifi card or the TV tuner, is accessory and may not even be present.
READ ALSO: Guide to assemble a PC and assemble computer parts
