by Anthony Ogg

Created on: July 17, 2009   Last Updated: July 25, 2009

What is inside of that metal box with the lights and power switch you call your computer? There are many different components found in a computer. Some components are absolutely necessary, while others are completely optional. Today, more and more components are added to computers than ever before.

The actual physical components that make a computer are referred to as hardware. The basic hardware needed for a computer to work at all are the motherboard, a CPU (central processing unit or processor), a power supply, memory(ram), a hard drive, and a video card. With these components, you can successfully hook a monitor, keyboard and mouse to the motherboard and you have a simple computer. The data or programs that the user installs such as operating systems, web browsers, and games, is called software.

The motherboard can be compared to the central nervous system on a human, as it sends signals to everything, and all hardware connects to it. Just like the nervous system sends and receives signals to control the body on a human. Everything connects to the motherboard and all data travels through it like a giant data highway.

The processor can be compared to the human brain, as it controls everything. The processor receives data from the other computer hard ware and sends data commands back to the hardware. Basically the other hardware sends a request to perform a task and the processor sends instructions on how to perform the task and when back to the component. Without a processor, nothing could operate on a computer. Many people refer to their computer as the CPU. Their referral is actually incorrect, as the CPU is short for central processing unit. Which is actually a component in their computer, but not actually the complete system.

The power supply is basically self explanatory. It simply gives power to all of the hardware on the computer.

RAM or random access memory is another essential for a computer to work. Ram is a chip where memory is stored for whatever operations and programs are currently running on your computer system. Whenever you open a file on your computer, it is automatically stored on your ram so that it can be accessed as the processor needs it.

The hard drive is where all of the software is stored. Every file that is downloaded from the Internet or from a disk is stored on the hard drive. Hard drives come in many different sizes ranging from less than one gigabyte to seven or eight hundred gigabytes. Some newer hard drives are

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