Enhancement day- My handout

Components in a computer:

Hard Drive

The hard drive’s job is to store everything you keep on your computer. Including documents, pictures, music, videos and even programs. Hard drives are very important and need to be kept safe. This is why most people have a backup system which is where they get another hard drive and copy all important files onto that. If a hard drive is damaged, everything is lost.

CPU/Processor

CPU stands for Central Processing Unit, which is also called a processor. It is located inside the computer case on the motherboard and its job is to carry out commands. Whenever you press a key, click the mouse or start and application you are sending instructions to the CPU. As the CPU carries put so many instructions so quickly it heats up. To make sure the CPU does not over heat, on top of it is a heat sink. This heat sink absorbs the heat from the CPU. A processor's speed is measured in megahertz (MHz), or millions of instructions per second; and gigahertz (GHz), or billions of instructions per second.

Motherboard

The motherboard is a computers main circuit board. It is a thin plate that holds the CPU, memory, connectors for the hard drive and optical drives, expansion cards to control the video and audio and connections to your computer ports, for example, USB ports. The motherboard connects directly or indirectly to every part of the computer.

RAM

RAM stand for Random Access Memory. RAM is your system's short-term memory. Whenever your computer performs calculations, it temporarily stores the data in the RAM until it is needed. The short-term memory disappears when the computer is turned off. In order to keep your document of file you need to save it. When you save a file the data is written to the hard drive as long-term memory. RAM is measured in megabytes (MB) or gigabytes (GB). The more RAM you have the more your computer can do, which is why people add extra RAM to improve performance.

Heat Sinks

Without heat sinks modern computers wouldn’t be able to run at the speed that they do. Heat sinks are very important as they stop the CPU from overheating. If they do over heat it can destroy the entire system which would cost a lot of money.  The heat sink cools down the processor after it runs multiple programs at once.