RGB lighting is a great entry point, and theming your entire PC around a color scheme can be surprisingly fun. RGB lighting your rig isn't as simple as throwing a light strip into the case. Almost every component you choose for your PC has a part to play.
Heatsink is a device that incorporates either a fan or some other means to keep a hot component, such as a processor, cool.
Air Cooler is device designed to draw heat away from the system CPU and other components in the enclosure.
AIO Coolers works in a similar way to a car radiator. A pump, positioned on top of your CPU, circulates a special liquid (usually a combination of distilled water and a thermally conductive fluid) around a soft tubing system, configured in a closed loop.
USB (Universal Serial Bus) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection.
SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives.
SATA succeeded the earlier PATA (Parallel ATA) standard to become the predominant interface for storage devices.
RJ-45 ( (Registered Jack-45) ) is a type of connector commonly used for Ethernet networking.
RJ-11 (Registered Jack-11) is a telephone interface that uses a cable of twisted wire pairs and a modular jack with two, four or six contacts.
Audio jacks are found on many types of audio equipment and musical instruments that accept external sound sources.
HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) supports the connection between a device such as a Blu-ray player or laptop and a flat-screen HDTV or projector.
In DC (Direct Current) the current (electric charge) only flows in one direction. On the other hand, in AC (Alternating Current) the current changes direction periodically.
BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is a firmware that is built into the computer’s motherboard. It initializes the machine hardware when booting and is typically placed in a ROM chip.
UEFI can run in 32-bit or 64-bit mode and has more addressable address space than BIOS, which means your boot process is faster.
Secure Boot is a built-in feature in UEFI that stops any unsigned driver from loading and helps stop malicious software such as root-kits.
To access BIOS or UEFI try one of these keys: F1 , F2 , F10 , F12 , Esc , Del. Another way consists of holding shift when clicking restart, troubleshoot, advanced options, UEFI firmware settings.
CMOS (Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) is a small chunk of memory used to store your computer's BIOS or UEFI configuration.
Power Supply is the component that supplies power to a computer. It converts the AC current to DC current.
ATX (Advanced Technology eXtensible) connector task is to provide your motherboard with power via the 24-pin connector. Nowadays the EPS (Entry-level Power Supply) connector is added to provide the CPU with power via 4-pin connector.
PCI-E Connector (6+2 pin) provides power to a dedicated graphics card.
The SATA power connector is the guy that made the Molex obsolete. All modern DVD-players; HDDs, SSDs are powered by SATA power.
Computer case, also known as a computer chassis, tower, system unit, is the enclosure that contains most of the components of a computer (usually excluding the monitor, keyboard, and mouse).
SSD ( Solid-State Drive ) is a solid-state storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently. SSD storage is much faster than its HDD equivalent.
Integrated circuit is a small chip that can function as an amplifier, oscillator, timer, microprocessor, or even computer memory.
To install the SSD use a SATA cable and attach one end of the cable to the SATA connector on your motherboard. Then, use an available SATA power cable coming from your system's power supply, and connect the cable to your SSD.
M.2 SSD conforms to a computer industry specification written for internally mounted storage expansion cards of a small form factor.
NVMe M.2 SSD (Non-Volatile Memory express) is a host controller interface and storage protocol created to accelerate the transfer of data over a PCIe x4 bus.
HDD ( Hard Disk Drive ) is an electromechanical data storage device that uses magnetic storage to store and retrieve digital information using one or more rigid rapidly rotating disks (platters) coated with magnetic material.
A single hard disk usually consists of several platters. Each platter requires two read/write heads, one for each side.
The data is stored in a very orderly pattern on each platter. Bits of data are arranged in concentric, circular paths called tracks. Each track is broken up into smaller areas called sectors.
Newer hard drives use a SATA data cable to connect to the motherboard and SATA power cable to receive power from the PSU.
Motherboard (ATX, Mini ITX, Micro ATX) holds together many of the crucial components of a computer, including the CPU, graphics card, hard drive, memory, connectors for input and output devices.
Processor socket is the connector on the motherboard that houses a CPU and forms the electrical interface and contact with the CPU.
Power connector, commonly a 20 or 24-pin connector, provides power to the motherboard and all the other components. Newer motherboards have an additional 4-pin or 8-pin connector near the processor.
Memory slots are used to house the computer’s memory modules. DDR3 stick can't physically fit into a DDR4 slot and vice versa.
Video card slot comes in the form of a PCI-Express slot on newer motherboards or AGP on older ones. High-end gaming motherboards come with multiple video card slots.
Expansion slots come in the form of PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slots and have the role of letting you install additional components (TV tuner, a video capture card, a better soundcard...) to enhance or expand the functionality of your PC.
IDE ports (outdated) and SATA ports (current) are used to provide connectivity for the storage devices and optical drives.
BIOS chip contains the basic code needed to take your computer through the boot process, up to the point where the operating system takes over. A Battery is also present to keep the chip powered when the computer is unplugged.
Chipset consists of two chips:
Northbridge is responsible for coordinating the data flow between the memory, the video card, the processor.
Southbridge, has a similar function, coordinating the data flow between the processor and peripherals such as sound cards or network cards.
Front panel headers are where all the elements (power button, reset button, power led... ) present on the front of your case are connected.
Rear ports are the bridge between the outside of your computer and the inside.
RAM ( Random Access Memory ) is considered a volatile memory, which means that the stored information is lost when there is no power. So, RAM (made up of transistors and capacitors DRAM: Dynamic RAM) is used by the CPU when a computer is running to store information that it needs to be used very quickly, but it does not store any information permanently.
SIMM ( Single Inline Memory Module ) is a type of memory module containing random access memory used in computers from the early 1980s to the late 1990s.
DIMM ( Dual Inline Memory Module ) is a small-scale circuit board that holds memory chips on the motherboard.
MT/s represents MegaTransfers per Second or Millions of Transfers per Second, and refers to the number of operations or amount of data that can be transferred per second. Often, the speed of RAM is represented in MHz, which is equal to MegaHertz.
CPU (Central Processing Unit) also known as microprocessor is the computer component (silicon integrated circuit) that's responsible for interpreting and executing most of the commands from the computer's other hardware and software. The CPU and memory (registers, cache, RAM, virtual memory) work together to run programs. The unit of measurement used to measure a computer's clock speed is called a hertz (Hz or cycle per second ).
Core is an individual processor within a CPU. Many computers today have multi-core processors, meaning the CPU contains more than one core.
Threads are what allow a CPU to perform multiple things at once. It refers to the highest level of code a processor can execute.
64-bit processor (RAM limited to 2^64 Bytes) is more capable than a 32-bit processor (RAM limited to 4 GB), because it can handle more data at once.
CPU cache (made of several transistors SRAM: Static RAM) is a smaller, faster memory, closer to a processor core, which stores copies of the data from frequently used main memory locations.
Overclocking a CPU means setting it up to run at speeds higher than their official speed rate for example more than 2.80 GHz.
Unlocked processors, denoted with a k at the end of the model number means when paired with the proper chipset it can be overclocked for faster than factory core speeds. Locked processors cannot be overclocked.
Resolution is the number of pixels arranged horizontally and vertically on a monitor, for example, 640 x 480 = 307200 pixels.
The frame rate also known as refresh rate is the speed with which the monitor displays each separate frame of data (60Hz ~ 60 fps).
Response time is the time (ms) it takes for a pixel to change from one color to another.
Display resolution shorthands:
720p ( 1280 x 720 HD progressive scan as oppose to interlaced scan)
1080p ( 1920 x 1080 Full HD)
1440p ( 2560 x 1440 Quad HD)
4K ( 3840 x 2160 Ultra HD)
Aspect ratio indicates how wide the picture is in relation to its height.
The display orientation refers to how you look at a screen. For example, a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels is the same as 1080x1920 pixels; it is just that the orientation differs.
Monitor is an electronic visual computer display that includes a screen, circuitry and the case in which that circuitry is enclosed.
They are three types of monitors:
CRT ( Cathode Ray Tube )
LCD ( Liquid Crystal Display )
LED ( Light-Emitting Diodes )
LED uses less power, provides a brighter display with better contrast, a thinner panel, and lesser heat dissipation than a conventional LCD. So really, LED are a subset of LCD.
Some of the most common types of such monitor ports include:
VGA (Video Graphics Array )
DVI (Digital Visual Interface)
HDMI ( High-Definition Multimedia Interface )
DP (DisplayPort )
24″ monitor for 1080p.
27″ monitor for 1440p.
32″ monitor for 4k.
There are many different types of display panel technologies:
TN
IPS
VA
Adaptive sync technology (G-SYNC) allows the monitor to synchronize its refresh rate to the GPU's framerate instead, which eliminates both screen tearing and input lag.
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