What is Hardware and its Types

What is Hardware in Computer?

Hardware is basically a physical device or can say intangible device which can we see and touch. It is basically a device that is connected to the system and accepts data from the user and processes it and after that provides the output to the user.

As you are reading this article on your mobile screen or on your computer monitor which is a hardware device. That’s the importance of hardware, if there is no hardware then there are no means to use software because they are dependent on each other. Without hardware how, you can able to access the data which you want? it’s not possible.

There are so many hardware devices an example: Mouse, Monitor, Printer, Speakers, and Keyboard. These are the basic devices that we already learned about in schools but there are also more hardware devices that are there which is build inside the cabinet like CPU, GPU, Motherboard, Power Supply, RAM, HDD, SSD, etc. these are all hardware devices

Types of Hardware

Types of hardware are divided into four categories:

• Input Devices
• Output Devices
• Processing Devices
• Storage Devices

Input Devices

Input devices are those devices that take input from the user example: Keyboards, Mouse, Joy Stick, scanners, Printer, etc., and others. So these are the devices are there where users used to provide input to the computer and get results from the output devices. It is known as an “Input Device”

Keyboard: This device is used to provide data to a computer via typing the characters or alphabets in the keyboards.

Mouse: It is basically a pointing device that is used as a cursor when we hover some software on the monitor and when we clicked on it then it will open.

JoyStick: It is used for controlling the movement of the cursor or a pointer in a computer device.

Scanner: It is used to scan documents such as photographs and pages of text.

Printer: It is used to generate hard copies and print any document.

Output Devices

As I said in the input devices when a user sends input to the computer then it provides the result in the output devices. There are some output devices are there where we used in our daily life example: Monitor, Speakers, Printer, projectors, optical mark readers, etc, so, these are the devices which is used to take the output from the computer. It is known as “Output devices”.

Monitor: It is used to display the output on the screen so the user can able to see it.

Speakers: It is used to generate a sound when a user plays a song or a video.

Projector: It is an optical device that projects an image onto a surface, commonly a projection screen

Optical Mark Reader: It is used to gather information from human beings by recognizing marks on a document.

Processing Devices

Processing devices are those devices that provide the processing of data to the computer so that the computer can able to provide the result to the users. There are some processing devices are CPU, RAM, GPU, MotherBoard, Sound Card, Network Card, etc. These are known as “Processing Devices”.

CPU: It is a central processing device that is used to provide the processing to the computer so that it can process the data and provides a useful result.

RAM: It is a Random Access Memory that is used to execute the program by storing the data and instructions of that program via read and write.

GPU: It is a Graphics Processing Units that are used to provide the graphics to the computer so that it can able to provide the facility of gra[hic intensive work for users.

MotherBoard: It is the main board of the computer where the important component is placed inside it like CPU, RAM, HDD, SDD, etc.

Sound Card: It is basically like a driver that allows the computer to connect all those audio devices which can be connected to the computer like Speakers, Headphones, Earphones, etc.

Network Card: It allows computers to communicate over a computer network.

Storage Devices

In computer systems and in smartphones, storage devices are used for storing the data in a computer system or in a mobile. Users can store any items in the storage like files, images, videos, projects, documents, PDFs, etc. If I talk about computer systems there are two types of storage HDD and SDD etc and in mobiles: SD Card.

HDD: It is a Hard Disk Drive that is used to store data in the computer. In HDD the read/write speed is slower than in SSD.

SSD: It is a storage device but it is faster than the HDD.

SD Card: It stands for Secure Digital Cards which is typically used in digital cameras and other portable devices.

Must read this related article:

Everything you need to know about Input and Output Devices.

Conclusion:

I hope you learned something from this blog. If you liked it then must share it with your friends.

I hope you like it, thanks for reading it till the end 🙂