Primary PC components

- The CompTIA A exams use a lot of what I would call unique terminology when it comes to the main components of your PC. So what we're gonna do right now is nice and slow take a look at a typical desktop system and define what the names of all the different components are and also how they fit into processing, be them processing, input or output. So let's just go on down the list here. This right here, according to CompTIA is the system unit. The system unit is where pretty much all of your storage and all of your processing is done.

Inside the system unit is your motherboard, your CPU, your RAM, hard drives, optical network connections, pretty much all that is your computer is done here. Now, a system unit by itself, as long as it's got electricity and it's booting up, is a perfectly good computer. The problem is, is it has to work with these terrible, terrible things called human beings and that's why everything else other than the system unit is a peripheral. So, starting off, here's a good old monitor here. This is a typical LED monitor.

LED monitors would be used for output, so what we can see what we're doing. While this is an LED monitor, do be aware that on the A exams, they still talk about old school CRT monitors, those big monitors, big heavy things of your forefathers. On the input side, we've got a very typical keyboard here. And we have a mouse. Keep in mind that we can have all kinds of different types of input devices that act as either keyboards or mice, but pretty much simple keyboard here and a regular old mouse.

A is not at all adverse to talking about things like track balls and touch pads, but they're all still basically, in terms of function, are input devices and act as mice. Marching along here we've got two speakers. In this case, this is a stereo system so it's a two-speaker system. If I were to add a subwoofer to this, we would call it a 2.1 system and if I was doing home theater, I would have five speakers with a subwoofer, 5.1 or even 7.1. This is a printer.

Printers do exactly like they're defined. They print out paper. This is actually a really nice little printer. Not only is it a printer but it's also a scanner and I think you can also bake cookies. I haven't really checked the manual enough to verify everything it can do. So this is what we do, we make output and then this is a scanner. Scanners are when we want to take paper and put it back into the computer, so we scan imagery and then we put it into the system. Alright, when it comes to the A exams, make you know the difference between the different types of major components.

More importantly than anything else, make sure that this guy is called a system unit. You're gonna see that on the exam and also keep in mind, if it isn't the system unit, it's gonna be a peripheral and all peripherals provide input or output. (light jazz music)