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You may know what the inside of a PC looks like, but what about the parts which make up your PC components? Over the past few years, we've dissected hard drives, keyboards, soundcards, and a plethora of other PC hardware, just to see what makes them tick. Here, we've picked out 22 of these autopsies to showcase. If you've ever wanted to see the guts of a netbook or the silicon that makes a network router work, read on!
Solid state drives are creeping toward affordability (and decent write speeds), but for all-around performance, there’s still no beating an old-school hard drive. The fastest one out there is the Western Digital VelociRaptor. Here’s what makes it tick.
It’s no longer in vogue to flash your bare chips to the world, so we cracked open a Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty PCI-E soundcard to see just what’s hiding inside this audio powerhouse.
Without fans, our computers would be toasty inside. But how does this simplest of cooling devices actually work, and what’s the difference between a noisy fan and a quiet one? We delve into the inner workings of this miraculous device to unravel these mysteries.
Comments are closed on this article
Philips
November 17, 2011 at 7:31pm
This is awesome. One of the fascinating innovations is this item. I've gained a lot of knowledge with this post. Thanks a lot.
Philips
October 07, 2011 at 4:23pm
Thank you for this post. This is so updating. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Josiah Charley
March 04, 2011 at 1:44am
That router you "dissected" looks quite awesome. Had I known that Belkin Vision can show me the status of my network, I would had bought it, because it's cool. I got addicted to cute complex Internet gadgets after I realized I had a Trojan and after I got a Cloud Computing Security scan, I started being more careful with everything WWW involves.
Den.Fletcher
October 24, 2010 at 8:30am
Almost everything inside a computer is cased and you can't really see what's inside. They do that for protection from particles and dust or electrostatic charges. But knowing what's inside the cases is not too important because if something breaks, it's not the kind of technology you could ever fix by yourself. The best you can do is to install an antivirus plus software that keep your computer clean of any malware.
JohnP
August 07, 2009 at 2:39pm
Except for one or two of the dvices that I do not own, I have seen the insides of most of this stuff. And some of it actually went back together and worked!
SplashPants
August 07, 2009 at 5:03am
I'm pretty sure it said 12 CM... and unless I really suck at math that is 120mm. And 120MM is a standard sized case fan.
pastorbob
August 07, 2009 at 4:26pm
80mm is the standard case fan size. 120mm is found on a few custom systems but it is far from being the standard.
tkddan87
August 07, 2009 at 10:52pm
120mms are now fairly standard in consumer cases they may start to be phased out by even larger fans. its hard to find a 80mm on a modern consumer case
80mm are still the standard for 4u server cases
kai-pro com
August 11, 2009 at 2:54pm
120mm is pretty much the standerd for cases my case has 220mm its huge thats a custom fan!!!
AttilaTheHunk
August 06, 2009 at 6:59pm
Since when did we consider GPS devices, mp3 players, mobile phones and ebook readers as PC parts?
kevin000000000000001
March 12, 2010 at 6:40am
I’m impressed, you know what you’re talking about
cheap laptop(http://www.logicalblueone.com.au/store/)
Hutif
August 06, 2009 at 9:44pm
I get his point though. They could have said "Electronic Devices" instead of "PC Parts." This is Maximum PC, so we can assume that it's going to be PC-related.
Illidankilla
August 07, 2009 at 11:07am
Not only that, but I also expected pc parts because the title said "PC Parts". :P
SuperiorBeing
August 06, 2009 at 9:09pm
You can't really take most PC components apart, e.g. ram, processors, etc, so they use things they can take apart.
arkweld
August 06, 2009 at 7:03pm
since finding actual PC parts to support a monthly autopsy column became really difficult.
Think about how many PC components you can take apart and look inside. There aren't many and most of us have probably already broken in to those.
DJO33
August 06, 2009 at 6:43pm
"OCZ Core 64BG SSD"
A BG? LOL! i started laughing when i saw that. Thats happened to me on many occassions. just wanted to point that out. Great article though. always interesting to see whats under the hood of different devices.
CentiZen
August 06, 2009 at 6:34pm
Is it just me, or are all of the items in this artice past autopsies (from the magazine of course)
I remeber seeing a lot of these.
erolsipar
August 06, 2009 at 6:13pm
Great review. It's actually good for ones that are curious what's under the hood. Remember don't fix it if it aint broken.
nekollx
August 06, 2009 at 6:05pm
Woooooo
Take it off!
Take it all off baby!
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Five teenagers, one alien ghost, a robot, and the fate of the world.
