ASIC = Application Specific Integrated Circuit. This is a chip that is made for a specific application, which is often done to consolidate many chips into one package, reducing system board size and power consumption. ASIC Chip = Application Specific Integrated Circuit Chip. Sometimes means microprocessor chips which do specific tasks; example: an ASIC chip might be responsible for a graphic display. Chip = An integrated circuit. The physical structure upon which integrated circuits are fabricated as components of telephone systems, computers, memory systems, etc.

BIOS: Basic Input/Output System, of personal computers. The BIOS is a chip inside a computer that starts (boots) the computer, runs the POST (Power On Self Test), and has the buffers for sending information from software in RAM, to any hardware device that information must go to.

Covers the makers of computer cases as well as modification and/or decoration of cases, aka casemodding.

Synonymous with Random Access Memory (RAM) or Read-Only Memory (ROM), but in a general sense it can be any device that can hold data in machine-readable format. Computer memory is measured in terms of the amount of information it can store, commonly in Megabytes(MB) or Gigabytes(GB).

The motherboard or main circuit board is the most critical building block of any Personal Computer. Sub-systems including the CPU, system chipset, memory, system I/O, expansion bus and other important components run directly off the motherboard.

Sites relating to power supply units for computers.

Including:

• Manufacturers of computer power supply units (PSUs)
• Sites offering reviews and comparisons of PSUs.
• Sites offering technical information, industry news relating to PSUs
• Specialist resellers/retailers* of PSUs which deliver worldwide.

The processor is the heart, the central working element, of a computer or other digital information handling system. It is the part that does all of the processing, the actual work of performing arithmetic and logic operations. Everything else in current computers mostly only holds information, as bits. Some technical names for processors: Central Processing Unit (CPU), Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU). Processors can be made in many parts or in one part (monolithic). Older processors were always in many parts, current ones are usually monolithic. There is no one necessary model or configuration for processors. The term's meaning varies with context, mainly by how processors are defined or implemented. Historically, the evolution was as: many cabinets in several rooms, then many cabinets in one room, then many boards in one cabinet, then many chip carriers on one board, then some as a few chips in one chip carrier (package). Key trait: all parts are treated, and work, as one processing unit during some task. Processors that fit fully on one integrated circuit chip are usually called microprocessors, and have parts (features) measured in microns or micrometers (millionths of a meter), or in nanometers (billionths of a meter). The future will bring nanoprocessors, with parts measured in a few nanometers, and made with a technology called nanotechnology. On this page, processors are arranged in three groups and levels: 1) Top: issues spanning multiple unrelated processors. 2) Middle: types or classes of processors. 3) Bottom: specific processor families, with their own directory category.

This category is for sites with excellent resource pages of links to computer/hardware.

Video Cards are devices that display graphics and text on a monitor. They require special software called drivers to communicate with the operating system kernel. Different video cards differ in the amount of colors they can display (color depth), the amount of dots (pixels) per line, and the amount of lines per screen (pixels per line x lines per screen is referred to as resolution). At any given resolution and color depth, there is a speed at which each vertical and horizontal screen can be drawn called refresh rate or frequency (measured in Hertz [Hz]). Along with your video cards limitation to certain resolutions and refresh rates, your monitor must be compatible to display at the same setting. Video cards use onboard RAM (Random Access Memory) to store the image before drawing it to the screen (buffering). The more RAM available, the larger the image (resolution) and the more colors available. PC video cards are available for the ISA, PCI, and AGP interface. Macintosh video cards are generally available for the PCI and AGP interface. Certain video cards are called accelerators in that their drivers are optimized to take special requests from the operating system and process them in much less time than a normal request would take. Examples are windows accelerators which draw windows components quickly, 3D accelerators which render and display polygons at tremendous speeds.