So most of us use a computer every single day, whether it be for work, school, checking social media or just for relaxing to play a game or watch a video, but many of us never stop to think how these complex machines work. While knowing this information is not always a necessity as you can always reach out to your local IT guy for help, it can give a better understanding of what exactly is going on with your system. So let's take a look at what makes up a PC and how it all fits together to allow you to do everything we mentioned above and much much more. Don't worry we won't get too technical but just review the main parts and their function. Here we go!
The monster behind the mask
The first component we are going to talk about, arguably the most important part, is the motherboard. Your motherboard is the component of your PC in which all other components interact through. Everything from your systems memory, hard drive, and graphics card all plug into your motherboard and allow these components to all work together to make your system work. This is also the component that houses the brains of the operation, you CPU or Central Processing Unit. The motherboard also houses the different ports by which everything connects like your USB ports that you plug a keyboard, mouse or flash drive into or your monitor connections, usually via an HDMI, DVI or VGA cable. There is also Display-Port cables but we will not go into that here. Think of the motherboard as the skeletal structure of the PC without it everything else would just fall apart.
Another important component is a CPU. The CPU handles all of the calculations and instructions that you give to your computer every time you you type on the keyboard or click on an application to run. If you have ever taken the side panel off your computer you would see a large heat sink with a fan attached to it. This heat sink usually sits on top of your CPU and helps to cool it down. Some systems, especially gaming systems even have water-coolers that cool your CPU by running water through a radiator that cools the water down which runs over a copper plate which draws heat away from your CPU. Most CPUs have a thermal threshold that will shut your PC down if the CPU gets to hot.
Much like us our PCs can temporarily learn things to make then run faster. This is where a systems RAM or memory comes in. RAM or Random Access Memory is what your CPU uses to be able to run commonly used programs quickly by storing the information needed to run them in a short-term data storage location. This memory is cleared out each time you reboot your PC. Always wondered why you IT guy asks you to turn your PC off and back on again. This is part of the reason. When a program starts "acting up" it could potentially be that something stored in memory was not accessed properly, restarting 9 times out of 10 fixes this though.
When you finish working on a project and you click that save button this is where your systems hard drive comes in. The hard drive is what stores all of your files, pictures, music and pretty much anything your system runs. Most systems today come with SSD or Solid State Drives. The benefit to these drives is that there are no moving parts in them and therefore are a bit safer from corruption due to a scratches on a disk like in a mechanical hard drive. Another benefit is because the drives are just memory chips that can be read almost instantly they tend to be much faster and greatly increase performance. They do cost a bit more per gigabyte but prices are constantly decreasing on storage.
Of course to do anything with any of this though you need to have a monitor to view it all on and this is where your systems video card comes it. Your GPU or Graphical Processing Unit is what takes care of this for you. Your video card is almost like a little mini computer of its own as it has a GPU which much like a CPU is the brains of your card and handles all of the calculations and processing associated with graphics. It has its own memory as well. Some CPUs handle you graphics for you. This is commonly called on-board graphics. What this means is rather than a dedicated video card your CPU processes all of your graphics. This can greatly decrease the overall cost of your PC and works great if your main functions on your PC are checking email, working within Microsoft Applications or posting to social media. However, if you intend to play games, especially AAA title games or work with Adobe Creative Cloud programs like Photoshop a dedicated graphics card is highly recommended.
Other components you may find in your PC are sound and network cards but often these are just built into the motherboard much like your USB ports. There are also fans which help to keep all of these components cooled down as they all heat up when your systems is running. Then of course there is your power supply which is where most of your cables in your PC run back to and regulates the amount of power that is required for each component. Outside of that you have your keyboard, mouse and monitor.
Taming the beast
There you have it, all of your PCs main components broken down and explained. Hopefully you now have a better understanding of the internal works of your PC, which will better help you when something goes wrong in trying to determine the cause. For instance, if your PC turns on but you see nothing but a black screen then chances are it is something to do with your video card, either a cable came loose or perhaps your card has died and you need a new one. There is the possibility it is something else but this gives you a good starting point and if nothing else will give you more information to pass along to your IT guy to help fix the problem.
So don't be afraid to crack open your computer case and take a look around inside and familiarize yourself with all of your systems components. Maybe even contact your IT support company and ask them to give you walk through tutorial on each part. The more information you have to give to your technician the better and the easier it will be for them to locate the exact issue, get it fixed for you and get your system back doing what it does best, working.
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