THE COMPONENTS OF A COMPUTERS

THE SYSTEM UNIT
Whether you are a home user or a business user, you most likely will make the decision to purchase a new computer or upgrade an existing computer within the next several years. Thus, you should understand the purpose of each component in a computer.
The motherboard
The motherboard, sometimes called a system board, is the main circuit board of the system unit. Many electronic components attach to the motherboard. Others are built into it. Memory chips are installed on memory cards (modules) that fit in a slot on the motherboard.
A computer chip is a small piece of semiconducting material, usually silicon, on which integrated circuit contains many microscopic pathways capable of carrying electrical current. Each integrated circuit can contain millions of elements such as resistor, capacitors, and transistors. A transistor, for example, with can act as an electronic switch that opens or closes the circuit for electrical charges. Most chips are no bigger than one half inch square. Manufactures package chips so that the chips can be attached to a circuit board, such as a motherboard or an adapter card. Specific types of chips are discussed later in the chapter.
PROCESSOR
The processor, also called the central processing unit (CPU), interprets and carries out the basic manages most of a computer’s operations. On larger computers, such a mainframes and supercomputers, the various functions performed by the processor extend over many separate chips and often multiple circuit board. On a usually are on a single chip. Some computer and chip manufactures use the term microprocessor to refer to a personal computer processor chip.
Most processor chip manufacturers now offer multi core processor. A multi core processor is a single chip two or more separate processors. Two common multi core processor used today are dual core and quad core. A dual-core processor is a chip that contains two separate processors. Similarly, a quad-core processor is a chip whit four separate processors. Ach processor on a multi-core chip generally runs at a slower clock speed than a singe-core processor, but multi-core chips typically increase overall performance. For example, although a dual-core processor does not double the processing unit speed of a single-core. Processor, it can approach those speeds. The performance increase is especially noticeable when users are running multiple programs simultaneously such as less antivirus software, spyware remover, e-mail program, instant messaging, media player, CD burning software, and photo editing software. Multi-core processors also are energy efficient, requiring lower levels of power consumptions and emitting less heat in the system unit.