Acronyms
Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2007 2:20 am
We all know what RAM is Random Access Memory, but some people, not everyone doesn't know what it does, and that's what this is going to cover.
PSU - Power Supply Unit - This is your computer's power supply, this is where your plugging the power cord into your computer. The PSU converts AC electric (Alternating Current later on in this thread) to DC, there are three main output voltages: 12 V, 5 V, and 3.3 V. If the PSU does not operate correctly it can damage other componets in your computer such as the motherboard and processor, in some cases it can kill the hard disk depending on what has malfunctioned in the PSU, generally what I see is the 5 V part of the PSU is usually what goes bad.
AC & DC - Alternating Current (AC) - Direct Current (DC) - Alternating Current can be found in your home usually varies between 110 V to 130 V, though the standard is 120 V. The key term here is alternating, the direction of the electricity changes about 50-60 times a second (also reffered to 50/60 Hz (Hertz) or cycles, because of this alternating directions allows electricity to travel further distances. When Thomas Edison first lit up New York City he was using Direct Current, because of his method many generators were used, a few years later Westinghouse (not the cheap TV's) developed Alternating Current. Direct current only flows in one direction. FYI - in AC electric there is no true polarity, some may argue, but there really can't be.
Volts - Dealing with electricity, look at voltage like a crave, the higher the voltage the more electricity wants to flow, thus when lightning strikes a very high voltage is needed to travel through air as it air is a good insulator.
Amperes - Also known as amps. This is the actual rate in which electricity flows.
Impedence / Resistance / Ohms - All are the same thing, Ohms is the measurement used, this is the restriction of the flow of electricity, higher resistances will require higher voltages to maintian a steady flow (amps) of electricity.
CPU - Central Processing Unit - This is where all the number crunching takes place, everything you see and everthing you do on a computer goes through this componet first. Other terms like GPU Graphics Processing Unit are other Processors that are in your computer.
DDR (DDR2 DDR3 GDDR2 GDDR3) - That just means Double Data rate. This terms deals with computer memory. Used to you had SD Memory which may have ran at 133 MHz, well with DDR memory you could still have 133 MHz but would be equivalant to 266 MHz, getting twice the performance. Currently in most computers DDR2 Memory is used, which is about 2x times faster than DDR and speeds of 533, 667, 800 and 1066, when DDR2 first came out 400 Mhz was also available. The higher the speed the better the performace.
Hz - Hertz (kHz, MHz, GHz) - Hertz - 1 Hz is one cycle per second, whether that be sound or sothing going in some sort a loop. Since this can expressed as sound or the speed of your computer here's a few thing that might help your grasp the idea. Your ears can hear frequences from around 20 Hz (deep bass) to 20 kHz like a dog whinning, the "k" in kHz means kilo meaning thousands, so when your dog whines the sound waves hit your ears 20 thousand times per second. Computers on the other hand operate in MHz and GHz, M for millions and G for billions.
That's all for now, more later...give me suggestions?
PSU - Power Supply Unit - This is your computer's power supply, this is where your plugging the power cord into your computer. The PSU converts AC electric (Alternating Current later on in this thread) to DC, there are three main output voltages: 12 V, 5 V, and 3.3 V. If the PSU does not operate correctly it can damage other componets in your computer such as the motherboard and processor, in some cases it can kill the hard disk depending on what has malfunctioned in the PSU, generally what I see is the 5 V part of the PSU is usually what goes bad.
AC & DC - Alternating Current (AC) - Direct Current (DC) - Alternating Current can be found in your home usually varies between 110 V to 130 V, though the standard is 120 V. The key term here is alternating, the direction of the electricity changes about 50-60 times a second (also reffered to 50/60 Hz (Hertz) or cycles, because of this alternating directions allows electricity to travel further distances. When Thomas Edison first lit up New York City he was using Direct Current, because of his method many generators were used, a few years later Westinghouse (not the cheap TV's) developed Alternating Current. Direct current only flows in one direction. FYI - in AC electric there is no true polarity, some may argue, but there really can't be.
Volts - Dealing with electricity, look at voltage like a crave, the higher the voltage the more electricity wants to flow, thus when lightning strikes a very high voltage is needed to travel through air as it air is a good insulator.
Amperes - Also known as amps. This is the actual rate in which electricity flows.
Impedence / Resistance / Ohms - All are the same thing, Ohms is the measurement used, this is the restriction of the flow of electricity, higher resistances will require higher voltages to maintian a steady flow (amps) of electricity.
CPU - Central Processing Unit - This is where all the number crunching takes place, everything you see and everthing you do on a computer goes through this componet first. Other terms like GPU Graphics Processing Unit are other Processors that are in your computer.
DDR (DDR2 DDR3 GDDR2 GDDR3) - That just means Double Data rate. This terms deals with computer memory. Used to you had SD Memory which may have ran at 133 MHz, well with DDR memory you could still have 133 MHz but would be equivalant to 266 MHz, getting twice the performance. Currently in most computers DDR2 Memory is used, which is about 2x times faster than DDR and speeds of 533, 667, 800 and 1066, when DDR2 first came out 400 Mhz was also available. The higher the speed the better the performace.
Hz - Hertz (kHz, MHz, GHz) - Hertz - 1 Hz is one cycle per second, whether that be sound or sothing going in some sort a loop. Since this can expressed as sound or the speed of your computer here's a few thing that might help your grasp the idea. Your ears can hear frequences from around 20 Hz (deep bass) to 20 kHz like a dog whinning, the "k" in kHz means kilo meaning thousands, so when your dog whines the sound waves hit your ears 20 thousand times per second. Computers on the other hand operate in MHz and GHz, M for millions and G for billions.
That's all for now, more later...give me suggestions?