Computer Hardware Fundamentals

Computer hardware is the physical equipment inside a computer case: the motherboard, processor, memory modules, storage drives, power supply, and the buses and connectors that link them into one working platform. An operating system and its firmware run on top of this equipment, and IT staff assemble, upgrade, and diagnose it directly.

itComputer architecture and hardware

Computer Hardware Fundamentals

A computer is a set of physical components that plug into a common backbone and cooperate to fetch, move, and store data. The motherboard is that backbone: a printed circuit board that carries the processor socket, memory slots, storage connectors, expansion slots, and the wiring, or buses, that move data between them. Every other component is either mounted directly on the motherboard or connects to it through a defined interface. Software, including the operating system, only runs once this physical platform has powered on, tested itself, and handed control to a boot loader.

This course covers desktop and server-class hardware: the parts a technician selects, assembles, upgrades, and diagnoses. It does not cover instruction sets or processor microarchitecture, which the companion CPU Architecture and Computer Architecture Fundamentals courses address, or the deeper protocol detail in PCI Express, Storage Hardware, Memory Hierarchy, and Firmware, BIOS, and UEFI.

The motherboard and the chipset

The motherboard routes electrical signals between components using buses: sets of parallel or serial wires that carry address, data, and control signals. A memory bus connects the processor directly to RAM. An expansion bus, PCI Express, connects the processor to add-in cards. A separate, lower-speed set of buses connects storage controllers, USB controllers, and onboard audio and network circuits.

On most desktop and laptop platforms, a single companion chip, the chipset, provides the second group of connections. Intel calls this chip the Platform Controller Hub (PCH); AMD's equivalent is generally referred to as its own platform chipset. The PCH connects to the processor over a dedicated link and, in turn, exposes SATA ports for storage, additional PCI Express lanes, USB controllers, low-speed management buses such as SPI and I2C, integrated audio, and system management functions such as the real-time clock and thermal sensors. Older platforms split this work across two chips: a northbridge, wired directly to the processor, that handled the fastest connections to memory and graphics, and a southbridge that handled slower peripherals. Modern processors absorb the northbridge's memory controller and primary PCI Express lanes directly into the CPU package, leaving the PCH to manage the remaining, slower I/O.

Computer Hardware Fundamentals

The motherboard and the chipset

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