EXPANSION CARDS:

Expansion card is acircuit board which is installed in the expansion slot of a computer’s
mother board that enhances the ability of the computer to perform additional functions
that is not offered by the mother board.

Video cards and sound cards are common examples of PC expansion cards. A new video
card added will enhance the three dimensional graphics processing power of a computer
while a new sound card may improve a computer’s audio input.

Generally, around one to seven expansion cards can be installed into the desktop
computer system. The Altair 8800, developed in the mid 1970s, was the first
microcomputer to add an expansion card bus. In 1981, IBM® launched its first IBM® PC
with an XT bus, which was later replaced with a 16-bit ISA. The introduction of the PCI
bus in 1991 resulted in modern forms of interface adapters that provided additional
benefits beyond enhanced graphics and sound.

Types of expansion cards:

1. Video cards
2. Sound cards
3. Modems
4. RAM disks e.g. i-RAM

POWER SUPPLY UNIT:

- It is a component that supplies the power to all the components in the computer.
- It converts the alternate current into direct current.
- The different types of power supplies are:
1. AT Power Supply - still in use in older PCs.
2. ATX Power Supply - commonly in use today.
3. ATX-2 Power Supply - recently new standard
OPTICAL DISK DRIVE:

It’s a drive that processes in reading and writing the data from and to the optical discs by
using laser light or electromagnetic waves near the light spectrum. Some drives can only
read the data, but the recent drives are both readers and recorders. Recorders are called as
burners or writers. Compact discs, DVDs and blue-ray discs are the common types of
optical media which can be read and recorded by the drives.

HARD DISK DRIVE:

 Interior of a hard disk drive

Date invented: December 24, 1954

Invented by An IBM team led by Rey Johnson

The hard disk drive is the main, and usually largest, data storage device in a computer.
The operating system, software titles and most other files are stored in the hard disk
drive.

The hard drive is sometimes referred to as the "C: drive" due to the fact that Microsoft
Windows designates the "C" drive letter to the primary partition on the primary hard
drive in a computer by default.

Popular Hard Disk Drive Manufacturers:

Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, Samsung and Toshiba

 As of July 2010
, the highest capacity consumer HDDs are 3 TB

 “Desktop HDDs" typically store between 120 GB and 2 TB and rotate at 5,400 to
10,000 rpm, and have a media transfer rate of 0.5 Gbit/s or higher.

Worldwide revenue from shipments of HDDs is expected to reach $27.7 billion in 2010.
2010 unit shipment forecasts of 674.6 million when compared to 549.5 million units in
2009.