Transcript for:
Introduction to Personal Computer Components

Hello everyone, welcome to the computer organization and architecture course and in this video chapter 1 introduction to the personal computer. The objectives of the course is to go over on the personal computer components such as motherboard, CPU, some type of memory and let's get started. with a personal computer.

What is the personal computer? A computer is a device that allows you to interact with some type of hardware and do some type of calculation or perform some type of function. So here we have some simple breakdowns, different types of components, and that components could make up a computer. Number one, we have a scanner.

So a scanner is some type of device that you can take documents, input them into our computers. And you might have a CPU, microprocessor. Then we have a RAM. That's random access memory. You could have an expansion card like a video card that goes into your motherboard.

And you can have power supplies. You can also have an optical disk. Most new computers come with optical disk drives, but some still have them.

So you could have some type of storage that could be SSD or hard disk. Your motherboard which connects all of these components together. together. Then we can also have speakers or some type of headphones.

Then monitor, system software or system software that would be things like your operating system such as Windows, Linux, Mac operating system. Then we can also have application software. These would be the things that allow you to do some type of functions such as browse the internet, create documents.

send email or messages to someone else. Then we can also have input devices. Most of you know those would be keyboard, your mouse, and then some of the external hard drives.

And... Lastly, we can also have printers. And not all of these components will be with every computer, but these are just some of the common components that come with the computer or defined as being part of the personal computer. Well, the next important thing is that you want to be careful with while working is electrical safety.

So with computers electrical safety have as certain electrical devices have certain power requirements and you can always guarantee that if you are working with an electronic device. computer, mobile device, a phone, it's going to have some type of power running to it. Either battery powered or some type of another power being plugged into operate to in order to operate it. That's why it's called an electrical device or an electronic because it uses electricity.

AC adapters, they are manufactured for specific laptops and you want to make sure that you don't swap those out and you don't want to take one from one brand and put it into another brand. You will always want to make sure that if you have one laying around to be very careful and checking. to make sure that it's right current and it's right type of model and the right type of adapter for that model.

Exchanging AC adapters with different types of laptops could cause damage to an AC adapter and to your laptop, so you want to be very extra cautious about that. Some printer parts such as power supplies do contain high voltage and you want to check the printer manual for location of the high voltage. components and you want to be very careful about those unless you've been specifically trained to work with those high voltage devices. Power supplies are another example you do not want to open up and power supply unless you have a specific training on doing and opening those up and working there so you would want to be very careful when you are dealing with those type of devices because they It can electrocute you and they can cause fires, injuries, fatalities if you are not careful. Moving on, the next thing is electrical ACD safety.

ACD is another big concern when working with electrical devices. Electrostatic discharge or ACD, it can occur when there is a buildup of an electrical charge that exists on the surface, which comes into contact with another differently charged surface. So now usually we think about an ACD in the wintertime when you are walking across the floor and you go reach to grab the door handle and you get little zap. So it zaps your fingers. And most of us.

I know that that's an EACD, but you don't really realize that you can have an EACD and you can never even know about it occurring. At least 3,000 volts of static electricity must build up before a person can fill an EACD, and even just a little bit of EACD can damage the component. So we want to be very careful in order to properly discharge yourself. before touching any electronic components and before picking up a memory card or touching a motherboard before you deal with some type of computer part you want to follow these recommendations so you want to keep all of the components in anti-static bags until they are ready to install you want to use grounding mats on workbenches or use grounding floor mats in the work areas or use an anti-static wrist strap when working inside of a computer.

Well the next part is the PC components. So we will start the first component here going to look at is cases. The case houses are internal components such as our power supply the CPU, the memory disk drives, the assorted adapter cards. The term form factor is something you want to be familiar with. It refers to the physical design and look of a case.

Most common desktop computers are available in form factors, including horizontal case, full case, compact tower, then all in once. And these are some of the examples down here. This is a horizontal case here. This is obviously an older model, and this is a full... Full-size tower here and now is the most common model and you will see in most gaming desktops today.

You have a compact tower, these are going to be slimline. There are going to be smaller components in there. And a lot of times you will see that you will have a laptop type of components put in these. So your CD or DVD will be a laptop type component. Then we have all-in-one.

So these are the computers that everything is built into the monitor and it just comes in one device. Moving on, power supplies. A computer has to or needs to power and it needs to convert AC or alternating current power into lower voltage, DC. on direct current power that's required by the internal components used by the computer.

So a desktop computer power supply form factor include advanced technology or AT that's a rich original power supply for legacy computer systems. Now most are coming with ATE extended or shortly ATX. That's updated version of the ATE.

You can also have the ATX 12V. That's the most common power supply on the market today. Then you can have the EPS 12V that was originally designed for the network servers, but it is commonly used now in the high-end desktop models.

Moving on to the PC components connectors. Power supply includes several different connectors. They use power various internal components such as motherboard and then the disk drives. In this first image here this is The modular power supply, you would only plug it in and use you need it and you will need to be cautioned. You don't need to use cables or only use the cables that come with a power supply unit.

Do not take a cable that belongs to one power supply and move it over to another power model. And even if it's the same model, it could be manufactured at a later time of the year. And you want to be very careful that you are using the right cable for the right power supply. And if you are using modular power supplies, then you have power supply that they are built in.

They come with all the cables, all the connectors pre-connected. You cannot take them off. You just have to deal with all of them. that are there and you may not use them all and use only ones that you need and the unused ones you just pin back but you might have like a 20 pin 24 pin slotted connector satized molex we have a bird kit connector a four pin eight pin six pin pci express power connector So you're going to have different types of power connectors and it's going to depend what your motherboard requires and what different devices.

The modular ones are the more popular and these ones are high end and it's in 1200 voltages. So power supply voltage. Power supply voltages, the different connectors in the power supply, provide different voltages.

The most common voltages are 3.3 volts, 5 volts, and 12 volts. 3.3 volts and 5 volt supplies are typically used by digital circuits, while 12 volt supplies are used to run motors and disk drives and fans. So power supplies can also be single rail. dual rail or multi rail. A rail is a printed circuit board and or you can call it PCB so inside of the power supply which is external cables that are connected and one note here is computer can tolerate slight fluctuations in power but significant deviation can cause the power supply to fail.

So we want to be very cautious about brownouts or blackouts or just losing power altogether. You always want to make sure that you have a good UPS or uninterruptible power supply on your computer. You spend a lot of money on your computer, you spend a lot of money on a power supply, you've got tied up into a computer and your computing device. You want to make sure that you spend a little bit of money and get good UPS and that would be a good solution for you to keep your computer safe.

Then motherboards. Motherboards is a backbone of the computer. It ties everything together from the CPU to your expansion cards to your memory.

It's a printed circuit board or PCB. It contains buses, electrical pathways that interconnect electronic components. You can look up on the internet and look at the backside of the motherboard and see how they are all tied up together on that printed circuit board or on that motherboard. The components could be soldered directly to the motherboard or added using sockets, expansion slots and ports.

Motherboard components, major components on the motherboard include central processing unit or as we know CPU, then you have the socket here, random access memory or RAM, RAM slots here, your expansion slots, your chipsets, your BIOS, your basic input-output system, that's what when we first turn on the power to the computer. it needs some type of system to be able to say hi. Everything is connected properly here. That's what BIOS does.

And you have to also have the chip and unified extensible firmware. That firmware interface or the unified chip. You can also have your SATA connectors and internal USB connector. motherboard chipset.

Chipset consists of the integrated circuit that's on the motherboard that controls how the system hardware interacts with the CPU and the motherboard. So most chipsets contain or consist of the following two types of Northbridge. control, high-speed access to the RAM and the video card, and Southbridge that allows the CPU to communicate with the slower speed devices, including hard drives, USB ports, and expansion slots. And I will tell you, if you are going to be taking the ComSci exams, you want to make sure that you have to be very familiar with North Bridge and South Bridge because you will need to be familiar with those two terms and what they do.

Motherboard form factor. The form factor of a motherboard pertains size and shape of the board. There is a three common form factors ATX, micro ATX and ITX or information text extended and these are the descriptions of the each one here.

ATX is most popular form factor. Micro is a little bit smaller, mini is even smaller and mini ITX then we have ITX. Now the choice of a motherboard determines how individual components attach to the type of the power supply required and the shape of the computer case. So when you are putting a computer together if you are doing your own build or you are building a computer you want to be very careful that you make sure that the motherboard matches your case and then you have built everything around the motherboard so what type of chipset motherboards are built in for the specific chipsets whether it's an intel or an amd then it would also what type of power supply you need to come into it what type of video card going to be plugged in. So everything determines of what the motherboard is and what it requires.

So another important component is the CPU. It is responsible for interpreting and executing commands. I think it's kind of in control of everything, where the motherboard ties.

together. The CPU is what does the syncing for the computer. It's a small microchip that resides within a CPU package and the CPU socket is a connection between the CPU and the CPU. between the motherboard and then the processor. And modern CPU sockets and processor packages are built in the following architecture.

So we've got a pin PGA or LGA and pin grid array. The pins are on the underside of the processor package and it's inserted into the motherboard socket. And this is an example of a pin grid array right here. And the pins are poking out and it's very important to be careful with those pins. If you bend them you could ruin your chip very easily and then you would have land grid array.

These pins are the socket instead of the processor and here's an example of that processor that lays on it and then you have the cover that comes down over and locks it down. Pin grid array is just you put your pin and you slide it down into the socket. cooling system the computer components perform better when they are kept cool electronic devices give off heat when you are working with anything that electronic and when you have electricity being consumed in that's a process that converts some of the energy to heat and you must dissipate that heat or else your computer does not perform properly.

The computers are kept cool using active and passive cooling solutions. These are two terms that you want to be familiar with active and passive cooling solutions. They require power while passive solutions do not. So passive cooling would be like a heat sink like in this first picture.

You are going to set this on top of the CPU down here and your CPU is going to be down of the top. cooling solution and what happens is an air or you might have some type of liquid in there so the air you take some type of fan and that sends across this cooling heat sink like a radiator radiator or just like a radiator on your car so the air passes across these fans and in fins so it exchange heat from down and take takes it up then exchange it out so active cooling would be where you have something turning and so you have some type of fan you are going to have the water or some type of liquid cooling so the fan just sends the air just like you would have an in your car radiator but it would send air across this radiator so the fluid gets exchanged and it sits on top of the CPU so that fluid gets exchanged in and out as it heats up. So a case fan is considered as an active cooling and heat sink is considered as a passive cooling.

So moving on to the types of memory. Different types of memory for a computer, there are going to be different types of memory. of memory chips depending upon which type of computing device you have.

There is a computer memory for a laptop device, for a desktop, memory chips. They store data in form of bytes. So byte is a block of eight bits stored either as one or zero. And you want to make sure that you know what is a byte.

And hopefully at this point you do. That's it. That's eight bits.

A bit is one or a zero. And eight bits is a byte. So now we have read-only memory, ROM. That's a ROM chip and that's read-only memory.

Those are pre-programmed chips that usually are soldered into or permanently attached like a motherboard or to the devices there. not removed. And then you have random access memory that's temporarily working storage for the data and programs that are being accessed by the CPU. And it's what we consider a volatile memory.

And that's an important term you need to know, volatile. Volatile memory means that if you turn the power off of the device, you lose what was ever on it. So what was in the random access memory, it's wild tile.

So it's not long-term storage and adding more RAM in a computer enhances the system performance. However, maximum amount of RAM that can be installed is limited by the motherboard. So again, we come back to what the motherboard does and what it allows. So is it 16 gigabits?

of RAM is it 32 is it 64 128 so when you are checking when you are buying purchasing all of the components you want to make sure the type of the RAM that's going to fit the motherboard Type of ROM. So read only memory. You can have ROM chips, PROM chips, EEPROM chips or EEPROM chips.

These are the some of the examples down here. You can see In the pictures, this would be the pre-programmed chips that are put onto the device that have the information that has to be read. Well, now different types of RAM, random access memory. You have the dynamic RAM or DRAM, then static RAM or SRAM.

Then you have the synchronous dynamic RAM, SDRAM. You have the double data rate synchronous dynamic RAM. And then you have DDR2, DDR3, DDR4. Then GDDR, synchronous dynamic RAM.

dynamic RAM. Well, memory modules. Memory chips are soldered to the circuit board that creates a memory module which placed into memory slot onto the motherboard. Different types of modules include DIP, SIM, DIMM memory and SODIMM. So the speed of the memory has a direct impact on how much data a processor can process.

in a given period of time. The fastest memory is a typically static RAM or SRAM, and it's used as a cache memory. So the three most common types of the cache memory are L1 cache, it's integrated into the CPU, L2 cache, it was originally mounted on the motherboard, but now it's integrated into. to the CPU and then you also have the L3 cache and that's used by the some high-end workstations and server CPUs.

Continuing with the memory modules, memory error occur when the data is not stored correctly in the memory chips. The computer uses different methods to detect and correct data. errors in the memory.

The different types are non-parity, non-parity memory does not check errors. Parity memory contains eight bits for data and one bit for error checking. and then we have ACC or error correction code that memory can detect multiple bit errors in the memory and correct single bit errors in the memory. Adapter cards. So adapter cards can increase the functionality of a computer by adding controllers for different types of devices.

Some popular ones are now sound adapters. that's in the most modern computers sound adapters are built into the motherboard so back in the 90s 80s sound adapters or sound cards were separate and you would have to plug them in. Then we have our network interface card.

Most computers are going to have the NIC built in onto the motherboard, but some computers that you may work with will not, and it will look something like this in our picture. And then we have wireless NIC card, a video adapter, a display adapter. known as a video card and if you know anything about computers or work anything about computers GPUs graphic processing units or graphic cards they are you know that they are very expensive and they are most of them going to have some type of fan in them and they are going to plug those into the motherboard and you might have a capture card TV tuner card, universal serial bus or USB devices. So we can also have an Estata card. Adapter cards.

Computer have expansion slots and that's on the motherboard to install the adapter cards so you would have something that would look like this. slots so you would plug in those and I'm going back like to the previous slide so in the sound adapter here we have this little gold platter slots that you would plug into the adapter cards slots and that's a type of adapter card connector and it has to match the expansion slots and it it got to match otherwise it's not going to work properly. So some common ones are the peripheral component interconnect. So in short we can say PCI, mini PCI, PCI extended. Then we have a PCI Express, Ryder card, accelerated and graphic port or AGP.

So type of storage devices, the data drives provide non-vital storage of data. data. So you want to make sure that you know the difference between the wild-tell and non-wild-tell.

Again, non-wild-tell means that if you turn the power of the computer or turn the device your information is still retained and that's considered non-vile. So some drives have fixed media, other drives have removable media. So optical drive is considered non-vile because you would write your data to that CD or DVD and it could be long-term storage for you and you can have the hard disk drive which has spinning platter, a solid-state drive which has no spinning drive in it, or you might have some type of magnetic type tape drive which aren't used a lot anymore but they're still in use today. Data storage devices, they can be classified according to the media, magnetic, like hard disk drive or tape drive, so you might have the hard disk drive.

hard disk drive that's magnetic, solid state that uses an internal computer component to use a solid state technology or optical like a CD or DVD. Now storage devices. Storage device interface that's inside of a computer and they can use a serial ATA, serial AT or SATA, so the legacy interface parallel AT or what we always call, we used to call ETE, it used to be IDE, then they have it now E-IDE, so the standards define the way that data is transferred and transfer rates and physical characteristics of the cables and connectors. So there are a main three versions of the SATA standards SATA 1, SATA 2 and SATA 3. The cables and connectors are the same but the data transfers.

are different and this chart down here at the bottom shows the different speed differences between IDE So we went from the IDE 8.3 megabytes a second all the way up to the 6 gigabyte per second from IDE to the SATA 3. Magnetic media storage, it represents binary values as magnetized or non-magnetized. So those are the physical areas of the the magnetic media what happens is a little drive head right here moves across the platter and it sends a little electrical charge and it turns those fields physical areas of the magnetic media and it will turn them up and down. So when it goes back to read it and it's turned off or depending upon the physical area.

So it's physically turning magnetic areas using magnetic magnets off and on on that platter. And you can have a hard disk drive or HDD. traditional magnetic disk drive with storage capacity ranging from the gigabytes to terabytes. So have some across the tape drives.

Those are the most often used for archiving data. They use a magnetic read, right head, and removable tape cartridges. They are very similar to the older VHE style storage bag from the 80s and 90s. And then we have the common tape storage capacities that vary.

between few gigabytes to terabytes. Now semiconductor storage or solid state drives, or as we call SSDs, they store data as electrical charges in a semiconductor flash memory that does make SSDs a lot faster than the magnetic hard disk drives. So SSDs have no moving parts and they make no noise.

They are more energy efficient and they produce much less heat than our hard drives. So early on you would see SSDs in the laptops because you didn't have to power them, you didn't have to cool them as much as they were smaller form factors. And now you have the disk drive form factor that's similar to the hard disk drive and you have the expansion cards that plugs directly into the motherboard and mounts into the computer case like other expansion cards. So then we have an adapter card right here and that would plug it in and it's got on the little board and you might have an M2 drive and here we have SSD, MD, 2 drive and mSATA.

or M2 modules. These packages can be used as a specific socket. M2 is a standard for computer expansion cards.

So non-vile-tile memory express NVMe. So it was developed specifically to allow computers to take better advantage. of the features of the SSDs by providing a standard interface between SSDs and the PCIe bus. So NVMe allows compliant SSD drives to attach to the PCIe bus without requiring special drives. And then solid-state hybrid drives are comprised between the magnetic hard disk drive and the hard disk drive.

And an SSD. They are faster than in hard disk drive but less expensive. They combine a magnetic hard drive with an onboard, so flash memory serving as a non-vile tile cache.

Types of optical storage devices. Optical drives are removable media storage devices. that use laser to read and write data on an optical media like a DVD or CD. There are three different types that you could have.

Compact disc, digital versatile, DVD or Blu-ray disc, or BD. That's high-def digital video data. There's some type of the optical storage devices CD, DVD and BD media can be pre-recorded, read only, recordable, write once, re-recordable, read and write multiple times to it.

DVD and BD media can also be single layer or dual layer. Dual layer media roughly doubles the capacity of a single disk and down here on this chart you see some of the storage capacity CD-roms could hold up about 700 megabytes DVDs could hold up anywhere from 7.7 4.7 to 8.5 gigabytes and blu-ray can hold on a single layer 25 gigabytes up to 50 gigabytes for dual layer video ports and cables Video ports and cables, a video port connects in a monitor to a computer using a cable. Video port and monitor Inter-cables transfer analog signals, digital signals or both. So video ports and cables include digital video interface, DVI, and just a note here that you're going to need to know these different types of cables and video ports, such as DVI, DisplayPort, HDMI, Thunderbolt 1 or 2, Thunderbolt 3, VGA and RCA. So in RCA you would have the video coming through the yellow and the audio coming through the red and white.

And I believe you've seen these cables working on your computers. Other ports and cables, input and output ports on a computer, they connect peripheral devices such as printers, scanners, portable devices. You might have a PC2 and this will... may never see one of these because it's an older model and this goes back into 90s and 2000s. So this was a PC2 for your keyboard and a mouse and you would have the audio and game ports for...

and you can still see this on the computers today. So you can... plug this for your speakers and your headphones plugs or in a joystick in your network port serial or SATA ports integrated drive electronics or IDEs or USBs so different cables we see adapters and converters there are connection standards in use today the components that are called adapters and converters.

You can convert that performs the same function and adapters but it also translates signal from one technology to the other. An adapter physically connects to one technology or to another so you might have the DVI to VGA. This could be used quite commonly in where we could have the DVI on the motherboard or out of the video card but the monitor is still could be VGA so or we might have the USB to the Ethernet I don't see much of this USB to PC PS2 anymore but DVI to HDMI are used frequently then we also have molex to SATA HDMI to VGA So different adapters. Input, now let's talk about input devices. Input devices allow the user to communicate with a computer.

Some of the first input devices include keyboard and mouse. Those are the two most commonly used input devices and still in use today. Flatbed scanner would be an input device. In order to digitize an image or document, joystick, game pads would also be input devices. You might have the keyboard video monitor switch, which allows to use multiple in one monitor keyboard and one mouse for multiple devices.

So typically you see that in some type of server racks. Some of the new input devices that we are using in the modern time is a touch screen. Steel is, I got it right here. It's a little pin that you would know to touch your screen.

And then we have magnetic strip reader or barcode scanner. Those are also input devices. Just think of an input device as...

Anytime you are providing data to the computer, into the computer it will be an input device. You might have a digital camera and you are taking data and putting it into a device. Webcams, signature pads, smart card readers, microphones, those are all input devices.

NFC devices and terminals that are near field communication, facial recognition, scanners. fingerprint scanners, voice recognition scanners, VR reality headsets that are all considered input devices. Let's move on to output devices. Think of it as an output devices are anytime computing devices sends information to user it's considered as an output device. So VR headset Virtual reality headset, a printer, projector, speaker, headphones, a monitor.

So a monitor could be, if it's a touchscreen monitor, it's going to be dual capability. It's going to be input and output device. Monitors and projectors, you have the LCD or liquid crystal display.

LED light emitting diode and organic LED or OLED. Now most of the video projectors use LCD or DLP technology. The DLP stands for the digital light processing and the different projectors have different number of lumens and that's how bright they are going to be that affects the level of the brightness and projected image.

VR and IR headsets. So there is a difference. Virtual reality uses computer technology, technology to create a simulated three-dimensional environment. A VR headset completely encases the upper portion of the user face, not allowing any ambient light from their surroundings.

And then we have augmented reality that uses similar technology but... It superimposes images and audio over the real world in real time and this one might be an example here where you can still see out of also you are going to have the images projected in front of you. And we have printers and output devices that create hard copies of files. Hard copy might be on the sheet of paper, it can also be on a plastic form, it could be created in the 3D printer.

You can also use the printer to do a 3D printing, you could print cards or ID cards. The older impact printers, not many of those are around. Then there are some of the stills you may see in these pictures, in some of the work. We have the inkjet, impact, thermal laser and 3D printers. So you will need to know these different types of printers.

And the printers use wired or wireless connections. And printers do require printing material like an ink, toner, liquid or plastic. if we are working with 3D printers.

But you are going to have to take that into consideration, some type of materials that we need in order to print something out. And printers also need drivers in order to communicate with the operating system. Speakers and headphones.

So speakers, the type of the auditory output device, that's just for the surrounding area, and headphones are some type of either like an earbud or earphones that's over your ear and in the air. Those are either projected wirelessly or wired. Well, that's it for today, students.

Thank you for your attention. We have covered... all of the PC components and please go over of the new terms you have been introduced today at your spare time and have a good day.