Today we can buy a new computer just how it was made by the producer (in one piece), or we can buy separate components and accessories and make our own personalized computer. You can simply go at a store that is specialized in computers and with the help of the shop assistant you can make your own unique computer, based on your day to day computer activities, and the amount of money you have available for spending. Some stores are even offering discount computer parts and accessories, so that’s why it is important to always search for the best deal.

First of all you should choose a motherboard, which is the main component on which all of the other small internal components are placed. There are many models of motherboards available, from big producers such as Gigabyte, Asrock or MSI and if you are not a computer specialist you should let the seller choose the appropriate motherboard for you. Then you must choose a processor, and here the best producers are Intel and AMD. Each of these companies offers many kinds of processors, and the ones that are really popular today (and also good) are the Dual Core processors. Since you have so many internal components that are working for you really hard, they might get hotter, and that’s why you also need a cooler for your computer. It doesn’t matter which one you choose, as long as it fits with the other components and as long as it does its job.

The next part you might want to choose for your computer will be the optical drive. Almost nobody is using a floppy disk today, so you won’t need this anymore. And even the CD-s are out of date, and most of the people are using DVD-s. So you might want to choose a DVD drive that is capable of both reading and writing DVD-s. The DVD-s will hang on for a few more years, but the Blu-ray discs are the future in this domain. So if you want to be prepared for those times, you can already buy a Blu-ray disc drive for your computer.

These are about all the internal components that you need, and finally to cover all of them you need to choose a computer case. There are some with interesting shapes and colors, but if you want you can choose a simple and classic one.

And of course now you have to choose the external components. First of all you will need a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse because these are indispensable for a computer. Then you can choose some computer speakers or headphones depending on your preferences and also other accessories such as: webcam, microphone, printer, scanner and others.

The output category includes the devices which allow the computer to send information to you. The normal flow of information for output parts is: computer-> user. This information usually takes the form of sound or sight, but there are new devices which can send information for other senses like skin (touch) and for the nose (for the sense of smell). The common and well known output devices include monitors, speakers and printers.

On the other side, the input devices let you enter information on the computer and generally, the information flow for this kind of devices is user-> computer. This range of computer parts is much wider than the output category and it includes the standard well known keyboard, the mouse, scanners, microphones, light pens or joysticks.

On the inside, the classic computer has a lot of parts, which work of course as a system. These parts are usually hosted by the computer case (in the case of a desktop computer, the big box hosts all these parts). For iMacs, all the inside parts are built into the monitor case,and the most important of them is the motherboard. It is like the backbone of a computer. All the other individual pieces connect somehow to this central motherboard. The most important elements of the motherboard are the processor chip, the memory and the PCI slots. Everything inside the central unit is connected to the motherboard through sockets which are set up for low-level programming(usually via BIOS). The computer memory is also connected to the motherboard and they work in some sort of symbiosis. All the add-on cards, video, audio, and all the other cards, for printers and for other devices are also connected to the motherboard. A modem can usually be found on the inside of an add-on card.

The memory is another essential part of the computer, of the hardware components and it is used to store the information temporarily, before it is manipulated by the processor. It is known as the Random Access Memory and abbreviated, everybody heard about RAM. This kind of memory is available only when the computer is turned on and it is measured in Megabytes (don’t confuse with MHz, which represent speed).

PCI slots are some outlets on the motherboard and they allow you to install extra components like sound cards, modems, video cards, and other kind of devices.

In the storage category we have the hard drive and the floppy drive, and the storage solutions have developed very fast in the last years. The hard disk is a device which has as main role information storage. This kind of memory is permanent and it exists even if the computer is turned off.

The floppy drive is available for a portable storage solution, the floppy disk. This disk can store data from one computer and you can move it on another computer. If you own an iMac, you will not have such a drive. Floppy disks, which nowadays have been successfully replaced by CD’s and other innovative storage solutions, were 3 1/4 inches in size and they could store 1.44 Mb of data.

Hope you made an idea about computer parts and which are their main roles in a computer’s functioning!

The computers today come in many shapes and sizes. Probably the most familiar is the personal computer and it’s portable version called laptop, notebook or netbook; but the most widespread form is the embedded computer.

Inside any computer there are many parts such as:

The processor: or the microprocessor is the central unit of information processing of a computer, which coordinates the system and which physically presents as an electronic chip. It controls the activities of the whole system and can process the user’s data. It’s the main element of a computer system; the chip, that is placed on the motherboard is very complex, and can reach up to millions of transistors. The microprocessor insures the data and instruction processing, both from the operating system as the ones from inside the user’s applications; it reads, process and control the applications and executes or supervises the information transfer and controls the general activity of the other components that make up the system.

The RAM: or the Random Access Memory, is the generic name for any type of memory that can be:

- random accessed, offering direct access to any of its location or address in any order, even randomly;

- usually implemented on electronic chips (and not on magnetic or optical devices as the hard disks or CDs).

The sound card: or the audio card, is a computer expansion card that facilitates the input and output of audio signals to and from a computer under control of computer programs.

The video card: or graphics accelerator card, is an expansion card whose function is to generate and output images to a display

The network interface card:  or LAN adapter, is an expansion card designed for allowing the computers to connect to a network of computers.

The hard drive: or hard disc, is an electro-mechanical device for data storage or saving. Data saving is done on a magnetic surface on the rounded metalically cups.

The CD-ROM: or the Compact Disc Read-Only Memory: is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains accessible data to a computer for data storage and music playback. The CD-ROM doesn’t allow the computer to write anything to a CD.