What makes a computer?

We all know what a human body or a motor vehicle is made up of. Have you ever wondered what makes up your computer?  Whether it is a desktop computer (pictured below) or a notebook computer, both these devices need the following hard ware to make a computer work. 

Let’s take a look at the generic computer as pictured below. 
Clockwise from the Top, is the system fan and heat sink that both provides cooling for your motherboard, processor, ram and hard drive.  
 
Next is the hard drive where you store all your software, documents and photos for long term storage. These can vary in size to suite your needs. 

Optical drive- DVD or Blu-ray drive to read/create CD’s/DVD’s and Blu-ray’s. Newer notebooks don’t have these anymore as most things are downloaded from the internet now. 

Ram is the computers short term memory. That remembers the last few keystrokes you make. Helps your computer to boot up faster. 

Processors do exactly that, process like a brain. The processor tells your computer what to do and when to do it, it decides which tasks are more important and prioritizes them to your computer’s needs. 

Motherboard- this is like the heart, it is a circuit board which talks to all your components. Without this part none of the other parts will work it links everything together. 

Power supply- A power supply is an internal hardware component that supplies power to the computer. A notebook has this but it is a circuit board that allows a battery to take charge to enable you to work off grid. 

So next time your computer is playing up there are quite a few components to consider to diagnose the fault, granted some faults maybe related to software or internet as well.  The most common hardware faults are power supply hard drive or worst case mother board, but your friendly Computer store can help diagnose your issue.