Be it a laptop, desktop or Mac all computers have certain things in common, things that they all need in order to achieve tasks. The basic components of a computer are universal and have been since the earliest personal computers came on to the market back in the early 70s (the Kenbak-1, but that’s a story for another day)

The basic parts of a computer are:

The Power Supply Unit (PSU)

The unsung hero of your computer system, the humble power supply is the most fundamental component of the system, but without it nothing would happen.  The PSU takes the Alternating Current from the plug in your wall and converts it into Direct Current that your computer can use. It also transforms the 230 volts (240 if you’re in the US) from the mains into much reasonable amounts (12 volts, 5 volts, and 3.3 volts).  This is critical as the components in your system are very delicate (in fact you can easily destroy on by exposing it to static electricity).

Power supplies are rated in Watts and come in sizes from 350 to 1000 watts. The more components that you have plugged into the PSU the bigger it needs to be, under speccing the power supply can lead to some serious issues and its always best to use one that is larger than you currently need. 

If you have problems with the PSU, you can expect strange error messages and issues arising from a faulty PSU can be notoriously difficult to diagnose.

The Central Processing Unit (CPU)

Often referred to as the ‘Brain of your computer’ the CPU is a chip that is very good doing maths problems very, very quickly. Even the slowest, least powerful CPU can process millions of calculations per second.

Computer programs are, when you boil it down, nothing more than long lists of instructions that have to be processed and done so quickly and in the right order. It’s the processors job to, well, process these instructions.

Physically, a CPU is a wafer of silicon with hundreds of pins, or hundreds of tiny sockets set into it.  Processors are very tricky to work with and very fragile.  CPUs are extremely sensitive to heat, the harder you work them the hotter they get.  It is possible to squeeze a bit more speed out of a CPU by ‘overclocking’ it.  This can result in a slightly faster system if done right or can kill your system if it’s done incorrectly.

Issues with the CPU can include the dreaded Blue Screen of Death and frequent system stalls or reboots.

Random Access Memory (RAM)

RAM is one of the components that dictate the ‘speed’ of your computer, the more RAM you have and the faster that it is the faster your computer system will be.  That said it is possible to have ‘too much’ RAM, this won’t threaten the system integrity but it will be a waste of money.

Random Access Memory is Random because it can access any memory address (location in memory) at any time without having to go through whole file to get to the section of the file or program that you need.

When your system needs to access a file or program it makes a copy of the program and loads it into the memory.

The most common type of RAM comes in long narrow silicon wafers that have a number of chips soldered to them, this package is known as Dynamic RAM.  It is called dynamic because it must have power running to it in order to maintain itself.

Motherboard

The motherboard, sometimes called the ‘main board’ is the largest component in the computer and is a large circlet board that all the other components plug into, in many ways it can be thought of as your computers central nervous system. 

The motherboard these days will normally have several components wielded to it, these normally include the wherewithal to facilitate sound and networking, but some higher end models also include high-definition graphics and other facilities.

Also built into the mainboard you will find ports that the keyboard and mouse plug into.

You will also find slots for expanding the capacities of your system, for example upgrading the video card (the graphics capability) or high-definition sound.

Hard Disk

Your computers long term memory, there are two kinds of device that serve the purpose of storing files for long periods of time; HDD’s and SSD’s

HDD’s are older technology now and have started to be phased out of newer high end systems.  A Hard Disk Drive is a number of physical spinning disks that have phenomenal storage capacity but are limited by the physical capabilities of the disk spinning in terms of access (or more specifically read/write speeds)

SSD’s are somewhat akin to extremely high capacity thumb drives.  They are made of chips that rapidly and silently access information.

One issue that if common with HDDs is that it doesn’t save information in one long unbroken string of data, instead it saves information across the whole disk, leading to the read/write speeds being long as these bits of file become what is known as fragmented.  To keep your system in good order it is important to run a defragmentation tool at least once a month.

Optical Drives

Recent trends mean that it’s a lot less common these days.  Optical drives are CD drives or DVD drives that are integrated into a PCs case. 

It’s a fairly common upgrade to put a DVD player in a personal computer or sometimes a CD Rewriter for archiving and backing up files.  The upgrade process itself if fairly straight forwards and as long as the PSU can handle the load then it should function without issue.

Problems with the optical drive can be caused by old or corrupted drivers (small programs that make the system recognize a device)