The Basic Elements of a Computer:
Hardware - Compose of the physical components. The tangible parts of a computer. ex. power supply, keyboard, mouse, etc.
Software - Intangible parts. The parts which do not have material form. ex. datas, programs, protocols, etc.
Slightly more detailed: Included in the hardware is mother board which is pretty much the hub of everything and manages all the different connections for other components such as your CD drive, hard drives, ram, graphics cards, sound cards, mouse and keyboard, monitor and anything else. Some motherboards have ethernet (a way of connecting to the internet), graphics, and sound cards built into them. You than attach the CPU. The CPU is your main processing chip and is generally made by AMD or Intel. The hard drives store all your information and files. Dedicated sound cards and video cards handle all your sound and visual stuff respectively. They generally do a better job than the motherboard does so if you are using intensive applications such as CAD or gaming you may want dedicated graphics and sound. Ram is memory that is used while the computer is on for running programs, generally more ram helps you run more programs simultaneously. Your keyboard and mouse are input devices that you use to type or navigate the computer and generally connect via usb or ps2 ports on the back of your computer. The monitor displays what your computer is doing and allows you to interface with your machine graphically. Your CD drive is an optical device that lets your read CD's you can also get drives that read DVD's blu-ray discs and hd dvds.
Answer:
Basic Computer Elements: In generally used computers one can find that there are four basic computer elements following are the elements.
(1) ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit): The ALU is the digital circuit that is able to perform different types of functions, such as Addition, Subtraction, and Multiplication etc.
(2) Control Unit: The control unit is the part of CPU (central processing unit) or other devices that performs the duty to direct its operations, the control unit is just like a finite state machine that has some finite states and the transaction from one state to the other state is called action.
(3) Memory: The memory is another very important element of the computer without memory the computer can't operate in today's modern age it is called the RAM (Random Access Memory) when ever we give some instruction to the computer it passes through RAM to the Processor and the processor processes it and send it back. The main reason behind memory is that it is faster in communication with the processor then the other memory devices such as hard disk etc.
(4) Input/output devices: The input and output devices is another important element for example the processor is the input device and it gives its output to the monitor etc for output.
There is another very important point the basic elements are considered as CPU (central Processing Unit), I/O devices, and Memory actually the CPU is the composition of different other elements such as ALU, Control Unit, Registers which is another type of memory.
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I'm not really sure how particular you want to get but without the following components a computer would be useless:
Mother Board
Central Processing Unit (CPU)
Clock Generator
Northbridge (Memory Controller HUB)
Graphics Card
RAM
Southbridge (I/O controller HUB) (for graphics cards, memory, etc)
PC BUS
OnBoard Graphics Controller
Flash ROM BIOS
and the Super I/O (for the keyboard, mouse, and other input devices)
That's a basic chipset layout, now there are more simple computers that can run off of just a processor, a tiny amount of onboard memory, and a circuit board, but as far as personal computers, everything on that list is necessary to make them work.
CPU
On many computers now the CPU is a single chip microprocessor, but traditionally the CPU was one or more large cabinets with hundreds of circuit cards or modules in it.
CPU input units output units and primary memory
Yes. A mac still has all the basic components of a computer.
The function of the mainframe is to hold all the components and subsystems that make up a large computer.
The computer tower is a large case that contains all of the circuit boards, drives, and internal power connections of the computer. The case provides convenience, protection, and the ability to cool all of the electronic components simultaneously.
with block diagram of computer with block diagram of computer