everything is and what it is supposed to be doing within the confines of the unit. The following sections are designed to give you a brief overview of that information.

When discussing a computer's inner workings, the best place to start is the motherbo

a digital signal from the graphics card instead of they typical analog signal. Generally, as long as the graphics card supports the monitor's highest refresh rate and resolution rate, you should be fine (Bakke, 2).

each square inch of space (Baker, 7). The smaller the dots, the better the details of the printed object. No matter which way you reproduce it, a printer is a must for a computer system.

ard. Every board or device is either directly or indirectly connected to the motherboard (MB) through slots or sockets. The first consideration when choosing a motherboard is the physical size of the board or the form factor. (This decision will also help decide which case to choose.) Currently there are two types of form factors available to everyone. They are the Baby AT and the ATX. The Baby AT was first introduced by IBM as a full AT that was rather large in size. Over the years, as chip sets and parts have reduced in physical size, companies have shortened the board to reduce the costs. The other form factor is the ATX and was introduced to reduce cable clutter, improve airflow across the CPU and make room for full length expansion slots. The best way to describe an ATX board is that it is an AT board turned 90 degrees. There are two other form factors available but only to large computer manufacturers at this time. (Kent, 87). When choosing which motherboard to use, an additional consideration is which processor you want. Since the physical location of the processor is on the MB, which processor you choose will demand what kind of chip socket on the motherboard you will need. Socket 7, Slot 1 and Socket 370 are the three types of processor packages currently available. The older Pentium and Pentium w/ MMX, AMD K5 and K6 LINE, Cyrix 6x86 and MII lines, IDT Winchip and Winchip-2 lines use the Socket 7. Pentium II and most of the Pentium III use Slot 1. The most recently marketed Socket 370 is used with the IBM Celeron line and will soon use it on the Pentium III line (Kent, 87-88). The "brain" (Phelps, 33) of the computer, otherwise known in tech land as the Central Processing Unit, works intimately with the motherboard. Typically mistaken for the entire computer system, the CPU interprets and executes the instructions within a computer. There are a few important considerations in choosing a processor. The first thing is the clock speed of the processor. Processors like the Pentiums, Celerons, and AMD K6 chips are measured in Megahertz ratings. The higher the Megahertz rating, the faster the clock speeds. The other factor to consider is the cache speeds. The general rule of thumb in regards to cache is the bigger the better, although the most important thing to keep in mind is matching the speeds as close as possible to the processor's speed (Baker, 5) to cut down on processing time wasted due to speed differences. The combination of the processor, the cache and the bus speeds on the motherboard determine how fast your computer really works. Now that the hard and more important decisions are out of the way, we can have some fun.

The next thing you would want to consider is how much memory you want, how much storage you want, and what kind of external device

Some topics in this essay:
Graphics Sound, AMD K6, CDROM DVD, ATX Baby, Interface SCSI, , Rolls Royce, SIMM's SDRAM, Processing Unit, Pentium III, tertiary storage, hard disk, bakke 2, power supply, fastie 38, storage tertiary, computer system, storage tertiary storage, main memory, resolution color bit, help decide, color bit depth, pentium iii, form factors available, signal graphics card,