CASE

CASE: is a frame, constructed of metal and high-impact plastic. It houses all of the internal components of a computer. There are many types of cases for example tower and desktop.

The components of the case:

• POWER SUPPLY
• Hard disk DRIVE
• Floppy disk DRIVE
• CD-ROM DRIVE/CD writer/ DVD writer
• MAINBOARD/motherboard
• CPU
• Memory / RAM
• Video Card
• Sound Card
• Fax Modem Card

Power supply: The power supply plugs into an ordinary outlet, but contains a transformer to lower and regulate the voltage level of the electricity provided to the computer.

Hard disk: A magnetic disk on which you can store computer data. The term hard is used to distinguish it from a soft, or floppy, disk. Hard disks hold more data and are faster than floppy disks. A hard disk, for example, can store anywhere from 10 to more than 100 gigabytes, whereas most floppies have a maximum storage capacity of 1.4 megabytes.

Floppy disk: A soft magnetic disk. It is called floppy because it flops if you wave it (at least, the 5¼-inch variety does). Unlike most hard disk, floppy disk (often called floppies or diskettes) are portable, because you can remove them from a disk drive.

Disk drives for floppy disks are called floppy drives. Floppy disks are slower to access than hard disks and have less storage capacity, but they are much less expensive. And most importantly, they are portable.

CD-ROM drive: Pronounced see-dee-rom. Short for Compact Disc-Read-Only Memory, a type of optical disk capable of storing large amounts of data -- up to 1GB, although the most common size is 650MB (megabytes). A single CD-ROM has the storage capacity of 700 floppy disks, enough memory to store about 300,000 text pages.

CD-ROMs are stamped by the vendor, and once stamped, they cannot be erased and filled with new data. To read a CD, you need a CD-ROM player. All CD-ROMs conform to a standard size and format, so you can load any type of CD-ROM into any CD-ROM player. In addition, CD-ROM players are capable of playing audio CDs, which share the same technology that support color, graphics, sound, and especially video.

COMPACT DISK: Known by its abbreviation, CD, a compact disc is a polycarbonate with one or more metal layers capable of storing digital information. The most prevalent types of compact discs are those used by the music industry to store digital recordings and CD-ROMs used to store computer data. Both of these types of compact disc are read-only, which means that once the data has been recorded onto them, they can only be read, or played.

DVD:is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality.

MOTHERBOARD(Main board): A motherboard, also known as a main board, mainboard, logic board or system board, and sometimes abbreviated as mobo, is the central or primary circuit board making up a complex electronic system, such as a computer.

The best way to describe the motherboard goes along well with my human body analogy that I used for the CPU. The CPU is the brain, and the motherboard is the nervous system.

CPU: Ab breviation of Central Processing Unit, and pronounced as separate letters. The CPU is the brains of the computer. Sometimes referred to simply as the processor or central processor, the CPU is where most calculations take place. In terms of computing power, the CPU is the most important element of a computer system. On large machines, CPUs require one or more printed circuit boards. On personal computers and small workstations, the CPU is housed in a single chip called a microprocessor.

RAM: Pronounced ramm, acronym for Random Access Memory, a type of computer memory that can be accessed randomly; that is, any byte of memory can be accessed without touching the preceding bytes. RAM is the most common type of memory found in computers and other devices, such as printers.

Video Adapter/Card: A board that plugs into a personal computer to give it display capabilities. The display capabilities of a computer, however, depend on both the logical circuitry (provided in the video adapter) and the display monitor. Modern video adapters contain memory, so that the computer's RAM is not used for storing displays.

Sound card: An expansion board that enables a computer to manipulate and output sounds. Sound cards are necessary for nearly all CD-ROMs and have become commonplace on modern personal computers. To output sound ,YOU need to be connected to through Speakers or head phone. To record sound input from a Microphone connected to the computer, and manipulate sound stored on a disk.

Fax modem: A device you can attach to a personal computer that enables you to transmit and receive electronic documents as faxes. A fax modem is like a regular modem except that it is designed to transmit documents to a fax machine or to another fax modem.

A solid-state drive (SSD): is a data storage device that uses solid-state memory to store persistent data. Unlike flash-based memory cards and USB flash drives, a SSD emulates a hard disk drive interface, thus easily replacing it in most applications. An SSD using SRAM or DRAM (instead of flash memory) is often called a RAM-drive.