PCs are the most widely used computers in the world and it is useful to have a brief look at these amazing machines.

Hardware of the PCs has modular design. All devices are attached to a board called mother board or main board of the computer through special sockets called ports and are detachable when necessary.

Main board of the computer contains electronics and specific integrated circuits (ICs).

CPU of the PC provides processing power for the computer system. CPU is an integrated circuit (IC) containing millions of transistors. Graphics card of a computer is the only part of the system, other than CPU, that has processing capability. Graphics cards are indeed small computers inside the main computer system.

Sound card, primary storage, secondary storage and optical reader / writer devices are other devices and components that are connected to the main board through special sockets.

There are devices other than types mention above that are called input and output devices. Input devices are used to introduce data into a computer system and output devices are ones used to provide output information after input data is processed and turned into information.

Computer keyboard, mouse and scanner are examples of input devices. Monitors and printers are output devices.

Every PC needs a software called operating system to enable the user to control the functioning of the computer and carry out necessary tasks.

Operating system of a computer carries out several tasks like basic maintenance and keeping the system healthy.

It is worth noting that operating system is a platform that all other softwares of the computer rely on it and no software can be installed without an operating system installed before.