| Part Two: What's inside the box? |
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| Work - Computer Primer | |||
| Written by mbrock | |||
| Tuesday, 20 May 2008 22:40 | |||
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If you have a desktop PC, you probably have a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse, some speakers, and maybe a printer hooked into the mysterious box that's sitting somewhere nearby. Have you ever thought about what is in the box? It must be important because lots of things are hooked to it. So what's actually contained in the box?
Actually, what is inside the box is very important as far as your computer is concerned. The box contains, among other things, your computer's Central Processing Unit (CPU or "processor"), memory, and hard drive. All of the wires going to the box are your input and output device connections. This box may also be referred to as a "case". "Box" and "case" are used interchangeably here. Inside the case there is a large circuit board called the "motherboard" or "main board". This board along with the CPU control the whole computer. The computer chip that is the CPU has billions and trillions of tiny transistors in it... Well maybe not that many transistors - but the CPU does contain a lot of transistors. It's well into the millions... The CPU is plugged into the motherboard, along with everything else associated with the computer, including hard drives, CD and DVD drives, the graphics processor, memory (RAM), etc. Plugging your digital camera into a USB port effectively connects your camera to the motherboard. The motherboard and CPU control it all... Your computer can get hot. You probably haven't noticed it, but there are also small vent openings on the front and back of the case along with fans inside the case. These are for cooling purposes. It is important to keep air flowing through the case because the inside of the case can get hot - easily over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The fans are the noisiest part of the PC and are mostly what you hear when your computer is turned on. If these fans were not there the computer would quickly overheat and stop working, perhaps permanently. Needless to say, it is important to give the case a little breathing room to allow for the flow of fresh air. If you have a laptop PC, most of this same information holds true but on a smaller and hotter scale. Laptops get hotter because they have less room for airflow in them. So that is pretty much what's in the box. Keep it clean and cool and it should last for years.
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