What does the inside of a computer look like?
Question
What does the inside of a computer look like?
Answer
The inside of a desktop computer is not as complicated as you may think. Below is an example of what the inside of a computer looks like and each of the parts of the computer with pointers to each of the major components that make a computer.
Information about each of the items pointed out in the above picture are found in the below links.
- CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD, Blu-ray
- Power cable (Molex)
- Floppy drive
- IDE cable (Data cable), new computers use SATA
- Hard drive
- Motherboard
- Power supply
- Processor (CPU)
- Fan (Heatsink)
- Memory (RAM)
- Expansion card (ISA, PCI, AGP, and PCI-X )
The expansion cards are often devices such as your video card, sound card, network card, etc. Click on any of the below links for additional information about each of these devices. It is also common for many computers today to have these components built into the motherboard.
Additional information
- See our connections definition for a listing of each of the type of connections found on the computer.
- How can I learn more about computers?
- Steps on installing new hardware into a computer.
- How does a computer work?
- Computer cleaning help.
- See the chassis definition for further information and related links.