Flashcards: Computer hardware

A computer case, also known as a computer chassis, tower, system unit, cabinet, base unit or simply case, is the enclosure that contains most of the components of a computer (usually excluding the display, keyboard and mouse).

An LED display is a flat panel display, which uses an array of light-emitting diodes as pixels for a video display.

A power supply unit (or PSU) converts mains AC to low-voltage regulated DC power for the internal components of a computer.

Bluetooth is a wireless technology standard for exchanging data over short distances (using short-wavelength UHF radio waves in the ISM band from 2.4 to 2.485 GHz) from fixed and mobile devices, and building personal area networks (PANs).

A card reader is a data input device that reads data from a card-shaped storage medium.

A floppy disk, also called a floppy, diskette or just disk, is a type of disk storage composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic enclosure lined with fabric that removes dust particles.

A graphics processing unit (GPU), occasionally called visual processing unit (VPU), is a specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display.

A modem (modulator-demodulator) is a network hardware device that modulates one or more carrier wave signals to encode digital information for transmission and demodulates signals to decode the transmitted information.

A touchscreen is an important source of input device and output device normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system.

Video Graphics Array (VGA) refers specifically to the display hardware first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, but through its widespread adoption has also come to mean either an analog computer display standard, the 15-pin D-subminiature VGA connector or the 640x480 resolution itself.

A video card (also called a display card, graphics card, display adapter or graphics adapter) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display (such as a computer monitor).

In electronics, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC, A/D, A–D, or A-to-D) is a system that converts an analog signal, such as a sound picked up by a microphone light entering a digital camera, into a digital signal.

In electronics, a digital-to-analog converter (DAC, D/A, D–A, D2A, or D-to-A) is a device that converts a digital signal into an analog signal.

A heat pipe is a heat-transfer device that combines the principles of both thermal conductivity and phase transition to efficiently manage the transfer of heat between two solid interfaces.

A heat sink (also commonly spelled heatsink) is a passive heat exchanger that transfers the heat generated by an electronic or a mechanical device to a fluid medium, often air or a liquid coolant, where it is dissipated away from the device, thereby allowing regulation of the device's temperature at optimal levels.

Gravis UltraSound or GUS is a sound card for the IBM PC compatible system platform, made by Canada-based Advanced Gravis Computer Technology Ltd.

Message Signaled Interrupts (MSI) are an alternative in-band method of signaling an interrupt, using special in-band messages to replace traditional out-of-band assertion of dedicated interrupt lines.

Digital Visual Interface (DVI) is a video display interface developed by the Digital Display Working Group (DDWG).

The GeForce FX or "GeForce 5" series (codenamed NV30) is a line of graphics processing units from the manufacturer NVIDIA.

HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) is a proprietary audio/video interface for transferring uncompressed video data and compressed or uncompressed digital audio data from an HDMI-compliant source device, such as a display controller, to a compatible computer monitor, video projector, digital television, or digital audio device.

This article provides a list of motherboard chipsets made by Intel, divided into three main categories: those that use the PCI bus for interconnection (the 4xx series), those that connect using specialized "hub links" (the 8xx series), and those that connect using PCI Express (the 9xx series).

In computing, Native Command Queuing (NCQ) is an extension of the Serial ATA protocol allowing hard disk drives to internally optimize the order in which received read and write commands are executed.

A network interface controller (NIC, also known as a network interface card, network adapter, LAN adapter or physical network interface, and by similar terms) is a computer hardware component that connects a computer to a computer network.

The expansion card (also expansion board, adapter card or accessory card) in computing is a printed circuit board that can be inserted into an electrical connector, or expansion slot on a computer motherboard, backplane or riser card to add functionality to a computer system via the expansion bus.