How many parts are there in a working computer?

Question

By parts I mean everything. Chips, cd-drives, PCI cards, etc.

Answer 1

I will assume you mean for a desktop computer, you could boot of a network without a hard drive. You could also install the OS while in another system, with compatible architecture or if you use Linux by cross compiling, then you would not need the optical drive
.
Here the list of parts you need:
Motherboard.
Processor
Processor Fan (often shipped with the processor, but not always)
Hard Drive
Optical Drive
Ram
Power Supply

Extras:
Sound Card (If you want better sound)
Video Card (If you want to play games)
Physics Card (If you want to play games and waste money)

If you wanted a component count ever transistor ect, I have know Idea.

Answer 2

There are dozens of parts on a mother board... perhaps hundreds depending on the board. A hard drive contains 100-200 parts, some mechanical. most electronid. Literally, if you count every individual part on most computers, you could come up with a thousand or more separate components. It's impossible to give an accurate number as every computer is different.

Each SIMM or memory module can contain multiple memory IC's. Here's an example:
PC133SDRAM Simm.
4x 16MX16-T1 memory chips.
1 small 8 pin IC
About 16 capacitors
about 21 resistors of various sorts, some having 4 in a single package.
That's over 40 components on just a single memory module.

--Dee

Answer 3

this guy ahead of me is wrong because there are really too many too count because on every part there is another working part like on a vid card there are different sized RAM and and in a power supply their is a capacitor that works even when the computer is off so there is too many to count

Answer 4

yeah a physics card if you want to waste money but i wouldnt count a video card as an "extra" unless the mobo has onboard video then you need a video card to use the system, unless you plan on running it with out a monitor!

Answer 5

the bare minimum is about 5-6. that would be HDD, CD-ROM, motherboard, Case, memory, PCU. then it goes up from there.
so about 6 min