RAM—RAM is an acronym for random access memory. It’s a memory device where data can be written or retrieved randomly. There are two types of RAM, dynamic RAM (DRAM) and static RAM (SRAM). DRAM differs from SRAM by the fact that DRAM (a) has to be consistently refreshed otherwise stored data in the memory will be lost, (b) is cheaper to produce, and (c) is commonly found inside many PC. As for SRAM, it is more expensive to produce and is mostly used as cache memory due to its fast access to data. The similarity they share is that they are volatile meaning that the stored data will be lost if electricity is not present. Currently the most commonly used RAM is SDRAM, synchronous DRAM. SDRAM synchronizes with the clock speed of the CPU to give the CPU faster access to the memory. The speed of SDRAM is measured differently than older DRAM. Instead of using nanoseconds, SDRAM is measured in megahertz, MHz like the current microprocessor.

Serial port—A port that connects other peripheral device to the computer that can only use a single data line at a time

Sound Card— It is used to generate sound from a computer.

Speaker—Some speaker can be internal or external that transmits digital or analog data into sound.

USB—The Universal Serial Bus is another more versatile port.

Video Card—It takes digital graphics data from the CPU and converts it into an analog signal that the monitor can use.

Zip Drive—A drive that uses a removable cartridge that's about the same size as a floppy disk. Each disk can store 100-200 MB of data and can be retrieved much faster than a floppy disk.

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