Exploring the inside of Personal Computer *James Breheney Power Supply Power Supply The power supply unit (PSU) in a PC regulates and delivers the power to the components in the case. The more components (hard drives, CD/DVD drives, tape drives, ventilation fans, etc) you have in your PC the greater the power required from the power supply. There are 3 types of power supply in common use: AT Power Supply - still in use in older PCs. ATX Power Supply - commonly in use today. ATX-2 Power Supply - recently new standard. A power supply can be easily changed and are generally not expensive, so if one fails (which is far from uncommon) then replacement is usually the most economic solution. Data Cable Data Cable Data cables (called ata cables or serial or SCSI) simply transfer data from one device to the motherboard inside or even to another device hooked up to the same cable. An example would be a cdrom drive could transfer data for listening to music via the data cable and the motherboard would process it and produce sound via speakers. Microprocessor An integrated circuit composed of layers of built-in wiring and transistors. Through the use of laser light, circuit outlines are etched onto a silicon surface through a mask or stencil design. A simple chip can have as many as 3,000 transistors, with as narrow a spacing of 60 nanometers between each one. A microprocessor is the central processing unit in a computer. It receives, transmits and coordinates every command and process carried out by the system. Microprocessor Computer Battery The computer battery powers an integrated chip called an RTC, or real-time clock. The RTC is basically a small, quartz clock, and allows the main computer system to perform time-critical tasks A computer battery is typically a lithium-type battery that is directly soldered to the motherboard, or primary circuit board of a computer. Computer Battery Cooling Fan Every computer has a cooling fan inside the case, designed primarily to prevent the CPU from overheating. Cooling fans may bring cool air into the computer, draw hot air out of the computer, or as part of a heat sink, which is a special product designed to draw heat away from a particular computer component. Cooling Fan RAM Random Access Memory (RAM) provides space for your computer to read and write data to be accessed by the CPU (central processing unit). When people refer to a computer's memory, they usually mean its RAM. Several types of RAM are used in modern computers. Before 2002, most computers used single data rate (SDR) RAM. Most computers made since then use either double data rate (DDR), DDR2, or DDR3 RAM. DDR2 is able to achieve faster transfer rates to prevent limitation of your CPU's performance, and DDR3 technology takes these advancements even further. RAM Motherboard The motherboard is the hub of the computer. The name "motherboard" was coined as a descriptive term for the mainboard to describe how it serves as a sort of "mother" to the computer. All transactions and processes must pass through the motherboard. Motherboards are designed and manufactured by many different companies. Through connections and pathways, the various components attached to the motherboard of a computer communicate with one another and work together to form one functioning machine. Incompatibility issues with parts that were not intended for use with the motherboard often cause instability and loss of functionality. Motherboard CD/DVD Drive Short for Compact Disc-Read Only Memory, CDROM drives or optical drives are CD players inside computers that can have speeds in the range from 1x and beyond, and have the capability of playing audio CDs and computer data CDs. IDE / ATA - One of the most commonly used interfaces used still today to connect disc drives to the computer. Panasonic - Older proprietary interface. CD/DVD Drive CPU Clock The system clock determines how fast the computer can process information. it is measured in operations per second. i believe 1GHz is equal to 10,000 processes per second? but im not sure. however, each thing you do on a computer may take multiple lines of code. for example, clicking the mouse may take 2 lines or so to execute. Overclocking is the process of increasing the clock to a higher level so it can perform more operations per second CPU Clock Internal Speaker Back before sound cards, computers could only produce sound from a tinny-sounding speaker embedded deep within the computer’s case. However, they also served another purpose, which is why most computers still come with small speakers on the motherboard. Before sound cards, most computers shipped with small speakers either inside the case or connected directly to the motherboard. Since those speakers also served as a troubleshooting and diagnostic tool, they remain as standard equipment even in contemporary computers. Learn about what a motherboard speaker is used for in modern computing. 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