If you ever want to troubleshoot a computer then knowing its anatomy is essential. There are many important components to a computer and when something goes wrong it’s important that you understand how they all work so you can quickly get to the root cause of the problem. In this article we’ll take a look at the key components of a computer and what their function is.

Motherboard – The motherboard is the holding place for all other components on a computer, everything is connected to it in one way or another, but it is not just a holding place for additional hardware, the motherboard also has many built in chips that perform a wide variety of functions. Most home systems use motherboards that have onboard sound, graphics, network cards, hard drive controllers and chipsets. In one respect this is great because we don’t have to have additional cards for each of these, on the other hand if one of them fails then there are practically impossible to fix since they are soldered on and unless you are competent in micro electronics then you won’t be fixing them in a hurry! The motherboard has the slots for everything from memory to the cpu and to any additional expansion cards that your machine might use.

Processor (CPU) – The CPU (Central Processing Unit) is the heart of the computer, it performs all the functions, the processing, the calculations, everything. The CPU views all data as bits, 1′s or 0′s. It uses what are called registers to store data and performs logic functions and mathematical functions to change and modify data. A CPU is capable of addressing memory to store data in and at all times it has a map of the current memory that is available, it is able to read and write to the memory to store and retrieve data from there.

Memory (RAM) – Typically there are two kinds of memory in a computer, RAM (Random Access Memory) and Storage Memory, which is what you might find in a hard drive. RAM is called volatile memory because it is not suitable for permanently storing information, once the power on your computer goes off, all the data in the RAM is lost. Your computer needs RAM to store frequently used data because it can be accessed very quickly and efficiently, if all data was stored on your hard drive then things would be very slow because in comparison accessing data from your hard drive is very slow because of moving parts.

Hard Drive – This is where all your files and settings are stored, basically anything that needs to be retained after the computer has powered off. A hard drive works in the same way a cassette would, it uses magnetic fluxes to store data, the difference is that data can be accessed much faster on a hard drive and does not require rewinding or fast forwarding. A hard drive uses read and write heads to access and write data, these heads can move very fast throughout the disk and this ensures that data can be accessed as quickly as possible. Hard drives vary in size but nowadays a 1Terabyte hard drive is not that expensive. In terms of performance though the two main factors involved are spin speed (measured in rpm) and seek seed (measured in milliseconds).

Graphics Card – The graphics card is the computers way of displaying data, it renders the image that is then displayed on the monitor. A graphics card uses its onboard memory to store the data for images, obviously the more memory the better although there are many other things to consider when looking for a high end graphics card.

Other Components – The other components of a computer are things like sound card, network card, universal serial bus controller to name a few. Typically these are built onto most motherboards although you can also get external card based hardware for your sound and network.

So there you have a summary of the main components of a computer and what they do, remember that this is a basic summary of the key components, I will be writing a more detailed explanation of each of them quite soon.