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CD/DVD

These are used to store Application, Music and Video. The CD/DVD uses two different interfaces. ATAPI which uses IDE an old interface and SATA is a more recent providing faster speeds and more space inside the PC. There are two media types, one which is a CDROM, this can only play content stored on the media. The other type is CD/DVDRW this will actually allow a user to create particular disks that might have a movie or application or even music stored on it. It might also be used to place an operating system or make an image. With a media type that ends with RW, it means that the media is rewritable and data can be written and deleted from it several times.

Motherboard

 The motherboard also known as a MOBO. It is a printed circuit board that contains PCI, DIMM, CPU or AGP slot. It is used to store a variety of Hardware components. The motherboard also contains many other electronic chips such as transistor and resistors. The motherboard provides ports that will allow Hard Disk or CD drive to be connected to it. The Motherboard is like the engine of a car, it is the most important part of any computer. The Motherboard will support two types CPUs Intel or AMD. The Motherboard is split into two parts, the Northbridge and Southbridge. The Northbridge will have all the powerful components (the most expensive) such as the CPU, RAM and Graphics Card. The Southbridge contains slower components such as Ethernet port, SATA, USB and Audio port. Motherboards come in different sizes, they range from Pico-ITX to Standard ATX.

CPU (Central Processing Unit)

 The CPU (Central Processing Unit) is the brain of the PC and is used for processing or performing calculation on data or commands. The CPU speed is measured in Hertz which goes up to Gigahertz (one billion Hertz). The higher the the Hertz the more calculations the CPU can perform hence a faster CPU. One thing to keep in mind is that the CPU can only process one instruction each time no matter how fast or how many cores there are. Modern CPUs will have a Dual Core or Quad Core which means it still processes one instruction each time but it is split of between the cores, which makes the process much faster. At the current moment of time Intel and AMD are the leaders in CPU manufacturing.