Examining the Insides of a Computer

Fundamentally a computer comprises one or more processors and some memory. A number of chips and wires glue this together. There are also peripherals such as disk drives or network cards.

Figure 1.1 shows the internals of a personal computer. A number of components go into a computer. The processor and memory are plugged into a circuit board, called the motherboard. Wires lead from this to peripherals such as disk drives, DVD drives, and so on. Some functions such as video or network support either are integrated into the motherboard or are supplied as plug-in cards.