I consider myself a pretty avid gamer, been playing games for the majority of my life, and as I start making gaming friends and playing more mmos and fps’, I’ve had people ask me about my PC. The specs, how much RAM, etc… can someone explain what all that is? I have a general idea but would like to know enough to be able to hold a conversation with someone. Also, how does one check their specs?
Edit: thanks so much for all the in depth replies! Learned a good bit as well 🙂
In: Technology
Here’s a guide on how to look up all your relevant specs: https://www.hellotech.com/guide/for/how-to-check-computer-specs-windows-10
RAM is random access memory. It’s temporary storage that all your programs and the operating system itself uses in order to quickly store and retrieve information. It’s a *lot* faster than storing it on a hard drive or even solid state drive, but it is also not long-term – once the program decides it’s done with it, that data gets cleared off so more data can be stored there. The more RAM the better, but there are also differences in how fast the RAM itself is (not as important as just knowing how much you have). Normal amounts of RAM these days are measured in Gigabytes (GB), generally from 4 to 16 GB, though you might have more (and hopefully not less).
The Central Processing Unit, CPU, is like the brain of the whole operation. It’s receiving tasks and figuring out how to load them or where to send them to get loaded and then sending that information back to the program so it can display all the information you need. The faster your processor the better. These days it’s measured in Gigahertz (gHz). There are also cores… those are like additional brains in the CPU itself that help it multitask even more.
You’ve also got your Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) which is like half processor and half RAM, and it’s designed *specifically* to handle all the visual effects and graphics renderings for games and videos and video software so that your *computer’s* RAM and CPU can be freed up for handling all the other stuff (sound, physics, background data, etc.).
Besides that you’ve got your permanent / long-term storage solutions, usually Hard Disk Drives (HDD – these are spinning disks) and Solid State Drives (SSD – think flash memory, like what you’d put in your cellphone or digital camera). HDD are cheaper but they have more moving parts and are slower to load data; SSD are more expensive but can load data much more quickly.
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