Hardware Components and limitations

Hard drive

A hard drive is used for permanent storage and can store a lot of data. They can store many videos and pictures and can access them all very quickly. Hard drives vary in size, usually from 160 gigabytes to 2 terabytes. A hard drive is essential for computer so you can have a permanent storage device and you can turn the computer off without losing the data. It has a lot of effect on the performance of the computer because every time you load the operating system or software, it has to be fetched from the hard drive and if it has a slow read speed, will take longer to load the software to RAM.

The hard drive has many limitations in speed because it is mechanical and has to use the actuator to access all of the files. Hard drives are the slowest part of the computer and the biggest bottleneck for the rest of the system. They also have limited capacity and will slow down even more as they fill up. This is because the actuator has to search through more files to get to the one it is looking for. This can affect how quickly images are loaded and how quickly applications like Photoshop are loaded.

Processor

A processor does all the calculations for the computer. If an image’s brightness is changed, it does the calculations for what colour each pixel should become. It also communicates with every other part of the computer using the bus to tell them what to do. The processor is absolutely crucial to the performance of the computer as everything relies on the processor because they have to get instructions from it, so if it is slow, the computer will inevitably slow down. This will make programs like Photoshop and Cinema 4D very slow to respond since they are resource-demanding programs.

The processor is the most important component within a computer and for digital graphics because when editing photos, it is calculating the manipulation of the image and how it should look. This is why a slow processor is very bad for digital graphics since applications like Photoshop and Cinema 4D require a lot of processing power.

Graphics card

The graphics card is responsible for creating and sending the image that is to be displayed to the monitor. They contain their own microprocessor which calculates the image for the screen. The graphics card is essential for digital for fast real-time manipulation of pictures and videos. If the graphics card is slow, it will not be able to display video fast enough or might skip frames etc which would be very bad for the designer.

The graphics card is responsible for displaying the image on the screen. When editing graphics, it does not do a lot of calculations because the CPU has to do most of it but it must display it on the screen so a good graphics card helps you edit things in real time like changing saturation, moving images etc. If you have a bad graphics, doing things like moving images will be laggy and it will be harder to edit.

RAM

RAM (or memory) is the temporary storage a computer uses for quick communication between the CPU. It stores the data for pictures, videos etc in order to access the data quickly. It also stores the data for the video editing or picture editing software so the user can load tools quickly. In order to do video or photo editing, a good amount of RAM is needed for the software and for the actual picture or video. If there is not enough RAM, there is a chance the machine will crash or it will have to use virtual memory which is very slow.

RAM is used for storing image data so the CPU can access it quickly to manipulate. This is also essential for fast editing of the image because if the RAM is slow, then the CPU will need to wait until it can process the data.