There are a few different major pieces of hardware that go into computers.

• CPU- This is essentially the brain of the computer. Its full name is the central processing unit, This is generally one chip of which there are two types, chips made by intel , and chips made by Advanced Micro Devices. The CPU’s Speed is measured in clock speed with the unit GHz, and it basically means the time it takes to complete a circuit. There are many ways to improve speed one way is to increase speed, the first is to have a smaller circuit, the second is to have multiple processors.
• Motherboard- This is the main circuit, its what all the other pieces of hardware are connected to.It provides bus which is the electrical connection between different computer components. This speed is measured as bus speed which uses MHz, and is essentially how many data bits can move across the bus simultaneously. So the speed is a combination of the speed at which the bus transfers data and how much data can be moved at once.
• RAM- This is Random Access Memory, and is basically short term memory, or working memory. It typically transfers data faster than the Hard disk which is why we have it,. The speed of this is measured in data transfer rate , which uses MB/s which is the time it takes for data to be transferred from memory to the system.
• Hard disk- This is long term storage. The hard disk is basically a stack of spinning disks inside a hard metal case. It’s speed is measured in MB/s for the data transfer rate, which is the amount of time it takes for data to be transferred from the disk to the system. There is also the access time which is in m/s and is the time before the disk can transfer data.
  • Solid state drives-It has the same function as a hard disk but it uses flash memory instead of spinning disks. This makes it a lot faster, more expensive ,and much lighter. So it’s mostly used in portable computers like laptops.
• Removable media- This is things like floppy disks, USB drives, CD’s, basically something with data stored on it that you plug or put into the computer.
• Network connection- This is basically WiFi. There are a couple of other things you might need like a router, in order to actually have internet.
• Bluetooth- this is input and output through the internet. The general range of this is 100 to 150 feet, and the device must have a Bluetooth communication chip installed.
• input and output- These devices mostly connect through USB ports.
  • input- This is things like keyboards, mouses, microphones, cameras, touchscreens, scanners,etc
  • output- This is things like your computer monitor, speakers, and printers.

Note: Mega represented by a M is a prefix which means a million, so MB is a million bits. Giga represented by a G is a prefix for billion, and tera is a prefix for trillion.