Computer hardware

Hardware is a comprehensive term for all of the physical parts of a computer, as distinguished from the data it contains or operates on, and the software that provides instructions for the hardware to acoomplish tasks. The boundary between hardware and software is slightly blurry - firmware is software that is "built-in" to the hardware, but such firmware is usually the province of computer programmers and computer engineers[?] in any case and not an issue that computer users need to concern themselves with.

A typical computer (Personal Computer, PC) contains in a desktop or tower case the following parts:

Motherboard which holds the CPU, main memory and other parts, and has slots for expansion cards
power supply - a case that holds a transformer, voltage control and fan
storage controllers, of IDE, SCSI or other type, that control hard disk , floppy disk, CD-ROM and other drives; the controllers sit directly on the motherboard (on-board) or on expansion cards
graphics controller that produces the output for the monitor
the hard disk, floppy disk and other drives for mass storage
interface controllers (parallel, serial, USB, Firewire) to connect the computer to external peripheral devices such as printers or scanners

See also