HNC Year 1 Tuesday morning group
Research task Oct 2 2012
For week 3 we shall be looking at the Hardware and the Peripherals used in PC’s. As you are temporarily reduced to 1 hour/week with this unit, it would be a good idea if you undertook some research during the 10.00 – 11.00 time on a Tuesday.
I would suggest that you undertake research to find the components used in a PC, their purpose and their relative costs. Also research possible peripherals that may be used, and again, their uses.
For the first part look at such items as:-
Motherboard
A motherboard is a the main board of the computer. It contains necessary parts such as CPU, RAM, and CD/DVD that all plugged into the interface on it. The motherboard is the biggest part of the computer.
Processor
We can say the processor is a computer brain. The processor tell us computer what to do when to do it. It help us which tasks are more important and prioritizes them to our computers needs. Also this processor handles all the basic system instructions such as processing mouse and keyboard input and running applications.
Power supply
It supplies power to the various components of your computer. Be it the fans, the CPU, the RAM, the graphics card or the hard drives.
Cooling
Computer has a cooling fan inside the case. It is mainly for avoid CPU from overheating. Cooling fan may bring cool air into the computer.
Hard Drives
A hard drive is nothing more than a magnetised storage area. Your operating system is stored on your hard drive as well as all your software programmes like Microsoft World.

CD/DVd
It let you play or read CDs/DVDs that are burnt in the computers. It can record things on CD or DVD from your computer.
AGP
AGP stand for Accelerated Graphics Port, is an advanced designed for video cards and 3D accelerators. AGP introduces a point channel that allows the graphics controller direct access the system memory.
PCI
PCI stand for Peripheral Component Interconnect is an interconnection system between a microprocessor and attached devices in which expansion slots are spaced closely for high speed operation. Using PCI a computer can support both new PCI cards while continuing to support Industry Standard Architecture ISA expansion cards an older standard. PCIe
PCI Express was designed to match the higher speeds of today's CPUs. It can accommodate Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet and even support chip-to-chip transfers.
Memory
A computer hard drive could be considered memory. When a program such as your Internet browser is open it is loaded from hard drive and placed into memory which allows that program to communicate with the processor at higher speeds since memory