What is Hardware

What is Computer Hardware

Computer Hardware includes the physical,tangible parts or components of a computer which you can touch or feel. Hardware is a physical part of computer system or electronic device. Hardware, we can touch and feel. Hardware is only one part of a computer system.

Hardware can be often categorized in to input, output, and storage or processing components. Devices which are not an integral part of the CPU are known as peripherals. Peripherals are used for input, storage or output. Peripherals devices such as a hard disk, keyboard or printer. Hardware devices examples are monitor, keyboard, CPU and mouse and It also includes all the parts inside the computer such as the hard disk drive, motherboard, video card, and many others.

Example of Hardware

Cabinet
Motherboard
Central Processing Unit (CPU)
Speakers
Monitor
Keyboard
Mouse
Graphics Card
Computer Data Storage Devices
Sound Card
Random Excess Memory (RAM)
Power Supply Unit
Optical Drive i.e. Bd/DVD/CD drive
Storage Devices
Solid State Drive (SSD) and more

Motherboard

This is the central piece of the PC, everything connects to it, and it contains the BIOS (basic input/ output system), this boots up the PC. Central Processing Unit (CPU) Often called the 'brain' of the PC, it's responsible for carrying out many of the calculations essential to the running of your computer. Quicker processors can carry out these calculations more quickly, more cores allows the computer to carry out more calculations at once.

Random-access memory (RAM)

RAM is volatile storage (it's lost when the computer is turned off), it has a very fast read/write rate, and is therefore used to store data which the computer is currently using. More RAM helps to increase the amount of programs you can use at once.

Graphics processing unit (GPU)

The GPU is like the CPU, except it focuses on calculations surrounding graphics processing. This is especially important for processing the graphics in modern games or in modelling/ video editing.

HDD (hard disk drive)

The hard drive is where the majority of data is stored on a computer, it uses a spinning magnetic disk, with a needle used to read/ write data. Often used for mass but not extremely fast data storage.

SSD (solid state drive)

Much quicker form of non-volatile storage than the hard drive, these are more expensive per gigabyte than hard drives. These are often used for the operating system/ software you'd like to boot quickly