Motherboard & System Unit

System Unit  The box in which the motherboard and other components of the computer is stored.  On a desktop computer it’s typically a box that contains everything except the input/output peripherals (monitor, keyboard, mouse, printer, speakers, etc).  On a notebook, it’s the box under the keyboard.  On some desktop units, it’s built into the screen (iMac, HP 6000 pro, etc)

System Unit (continued)  The system unit (usually) contains:  Motherboard  Hard drives  Optical Drives  Power Supply  Expansion cards  Expansion ports

Motherboard  The motherboard (aka the parent board by pc individuals or the logic board by Apple) is a printed circuit board to which is attached the CPU, miscellaneous integrated circuits such as ROM and connectors for memory, storage, video, keyboard, mouse and other ports.  Most motherboards today are integrated with sound, graphics, wired and wireless network

Power Supply  The power supply suppiles power to a computer.  It converts AC power to DC and splits it off to various voltages needed by the components of the system.  On a notebook computer, the battery supplies power to a converter which splits off the various voltages. The battery is charged by an external charger called a brick.

Expansion (controller) cards  Expansion cards can be plugged into slots on the motherboard (of desktop systems) to provide capabilities not provided by the motherboard.  Since most modern motherboards have most capabilities built in these are no longer necessary for most systems.  Typically they are used for high-end graphics, RAID, tv tuners.

Ports  In the context of hardware, ports refer to connectors between the computer and external devices. Among common ports are:  Parallel ports – uncommon today, formerly used to connect printers  Serial ports – also uncommon, formerly used for mouse  PS/2 ports – used to connect a keyboard or mouse to a PC compatible computer. These are becoming less common

Ports (continued)  USB port (universal serial bus) – USB 1.1, 2.0, 3.0  Firewire port – aka IEEE 1394  LightPeak (Thunderbolt)  Video ports – used to connect a monitor. There are a variety of different connections:VGA, DVI, Display port

Ports (Continued) SCSI – (small computer systems interface) primarily used for connecting storage devices such as hard drives, tape drives, optical drives, usually to servers. These connections are usually internal. SATA – (Serial ATA) typically used to connect hard drives, optical drives internally. ESATA is an external SATA connector.