Computers hardware, software and internet

There are so many people who own computers and are afraid to do anything with them when it comes to upgrades or repairs. The truth is with some basic computer skills anyone can do it. While the system and the components that make up the computer may be complex, replacing, installing or upgraded them is extremely simple. With a few east tips and instructions you can be building your own system in no time.

Basic Components of Your Computer

Your computer starts with a case which has a power supply inside. The power supply feeds power to the mother board, hard drive and the ROM drives. The motherboard is where everything connects into, the CPU, memory, system fans, video, sound and Ethernet cards. Most motherboards come with integrated sound, video and Ethernet, this basically means that there are no separate cards for these devices; they are built right into the board. The motherboard offers slots for a variety of devices that can be added on to your system, such as TV Tuner cards, sound and video and Ethernet if you don’t want to use the onboard devices and other devices. There are normally several slots for memory depending on what the board will support, always try to maximize the memory when possible, it helps make your system run faster and smoother.

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The hard drive and ROM drives are connected to the motherboard as well but by cable not set in a slot. The case will have bays available for several ROM drives and should have a place for more than one hard drive to set. If you are adding another hard drive you will have to set the jumper pins to reflect one as the master and one as the slave. In most instances there is no reason to enter the BIOS screen, the system will recognize the drive and pick it up on its own.

The outside of your computer will consist of a display or monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers. These connect to the tower and can be replaced without any device drivers or changing any settings.

Learning Your Way Around The Computer

The best way to get the basic computer skills you need is to just open the case up and get familiar with the hardware inside your computer. Even if you have no desire to upgrade, replace or install anything new just look around and see how everything is connected and get to know what slots are available and what they are for as well as knowing what hardware is already installed.

When you open the case be sure the computer is turned off and always touch the side of the case before touching anything inside to ensure you do not create electrical static inside the case. You cannot hurt the parts just by looking and as long as you don’t bend any pins or force anything in the wrong way it is very hard to do damage to the parts. So, get in there and learn what makes your computer run so when you are ready to upgrade or replace a part you know what you are doing.