System Unit and its components, Lecture notes of Information Technology

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CH. 4 THE COMPONENTS OF

THE SYSTEM UNIT

By Valerie Williams

THE SYSTEM UNIT

 System unit is case that has electronic components of the computer used to process data.  A motherboard or also know as system board, is the main circuit board of the system.

PROCESSOR

 The central processing unit (CPU) interprets and carries out basic commands that run a computer.  Multi-core processor is one chip with two or more separate processor cores.  Dual core processor is a chip that has two separate processor cores.

PROCESSOR

 Quad core possessor is a chip with four separate processor cores.  A control unit is the component of the processor that helps to direct and coordinate most of the functions in the computer.  Arithmetic logic unit (ALU) is also a component of the processor, it performs arithmetic, comparison, and other operations.

PROCESSOR

 A processor contains small, high speed storage locations, called registers that temporarily hold instructions and data.  The processor relies on a system clock that controls the timing of all the computer operations.  The clock speed is measured by the number of ticks per second.

DATA REPRESENTATION  The binary system is a number system that has just two unique digits, 0 and 1. A bit also know as binary digit, is the smallest unit of data the computer can process. A byte is when eight bits are grouped together as a unit.

MEMORY

 Memory consists of electronic components that store instructions waiting to be executed by the processor, data needed by those instructions, and the results of processing the information.  There are 2 types of memory, Volatile is temporary and nonvolatile is permanent memory.

MEMORY SIZES

 Kilobyte (KB OR K) is equal to exactly 1,024 bytes.  Megabyte (MB) is equal to about one million bytes.  Gigabyte (GB) is equal to about one million bytes.  Terabyte (TB) is equal to approximately one trillion bytes.

EXPANSION SLOTS AND ADAPTER CARDS  Expansion slots  Adapter card  Sound card  Video card  Plug and Play

PORTS AND CONNECTORS A port is the point at which a peripheral attaches/ communicates with a system unit so that the peripheral can send data to the computer. A jack is used to identify audio and video ports. A connector joints a cable to a port. Universal serial bus port (USB)

PORTS AND CONNECTORS  eSATA  Bluetooth  IrDA  Serial  MIDI

PORT TYPES

BAYS  A bay is an opening inside the system unit in which you can install additional equipment.   Drive bay is a regular opening that typically holds disk drives.  External bay allows user to access opening in the bay from outside the system unit.  Internal bay is concealed entirely within the system unit.

POWER SUPPLY  A power supply is the component of the system unit that converts the wall outlet AC power into the DC power.  AC adapter is an external power supply. An example would be a cable modem, speakers, or a printer.