The secondary components of a computer and its peripherals

Note : This page has been translated into English from French by a machine translation tool

As opposed to the main components (or even indispensable for some) that allow your computer to function, we will focus here on various components and peripherals, internal or external, which are, for most uses, generally less important to study before a purchase. The goal is to help you understand what their impact is and if necessary to know if you should be interested in them in order to make your choice and find a hardware configuration that suits you. If you haven’t already done so, we invite you to read our article Technical characteristics of computers and tablets in order to learn about the main components of a computer and what are the characteristics you should attach importance to each of them according to your needs.

However, before we begin, we would like to make it clear that we consider the components presented here as secondary because not being interested in them when searching for your ideal configuration will in most cases have little impact on their final performance. This in no way means that taking an interest in them is completely optional, nor does it mean that some of them are not essential to the operation of your machine. You will understand why…

Internal components

Wireless LAN network card

Adding a wireless LAN network card to a computer’s configuration allows you, as its name suggests, to benefit from Internet and corporate network access on your device without the need to connect to an Ethernet wall outlet or plug in an additional external wireless receiver. Unlike laptops, this type of functionality is only rarely offered on computers in CPU or workstation format. However, it can be very useful if you need to position your device in a place where you don’t have a wall outlet nearby or want to reduce the clutter generated by a large number of cables.

Mobile broadband card

The mobile broadband card allows you to access the internet via mobile networks via a chip. It can be useful for nomadic use of your equipment and avoids having to ask for local Wi-Fi passwords when such networks are available or otherwise having to depend on the availability of Wi-Fi to access the Internet. Using the same operating principle as Internet access on a smartphone, activating a subscription allows you to take advantage of an Internet connection directly on your computer wherever mobile networks such as 4G are available.

Power supply unit

It goes without saying that the power supply is one of the most important components of your configuration. Our focus here is on power supplies for CPUs or workstations, being external, as you know, on laptops. It is the power supply that powers all the peripherals that are connected both inside and outside the device. It is necessary that this block delivers sufficient power to be able to operate all these components simultaneously without slowing down. Thus, the more powerful your configuration will be, the more energy it will consume and the more power it will require. Fortunately, if you do not assemble your computer yourself, this is a component that you will not have to choose yourself. An online configurator will allow you to choose your components and adapt the power supply needed to make it work properly.

External devices

Webcams and conference cameras

As you probably already know, you can benefit whether it’s original on a laptop or tablet or as an accessory on a desktop computer, whether it’s a CPU or workstation, a front camera, also called a webcam. This tool allows you to communicate with your loved ones or to organize professional interviews remotely via video calls. However, with the ever-increasing need for professionals to organize remote meetings with more and more participants, you will quickly find yourself quite limited with a simple webcam. Fortunately, you can now choose a panoramic conference camera to benefit from both a microphone much more powerful than your laptop but also a wide-angle camera capable of bringing into the field of vision of all participants in a meeting room. They are also equipped with loudspeakers in order to make the voice of your interlocutors more audible.

In order to choose your webcam or conference camera, here is a small overview of their main features …

The video resolution

As with cameras and video cameras, the resolution determines the level of detail perceived by your interlocutors during your meetings and conferences. A high resolution will be interesting for large rooms where participants located at the far end of the room will be very difficult to distinguish if the image quality of your camera is too low. Some of these cameras today offer Ultra HD 4K (2160p) resolutions, which are perfectly suited for use in rooms with large numbers of participants.

The field of view

A wide field of view will be perfectly suited to rooms with shallower depths and where the distance between the participants and the camera is generally small. The objective is obviously to get everyone in the field of view of the camera. Conversely, a wide angle can be a disadvantage in deep rooms where the back of the room will be smaller on the image and therefore more difficult to discern.

Other features and accessories

Depending on your requirements, you may also be interested in the connectivity of your camera. Indeed, some of them are now equipped with Bluetooth technology or network connectivity allowing for example to control it via a smartphone or a tablet. Let’s also mention the presence on some models of an automatic zoom framing system that adapts to all room configurations or a technology for optimizing the rendering of faces. It is also possible for the most powerful to connect additional microphones to improve the sound capture coverage in the largest rooms.

It’s up to you to make the most judicious choice according to your needs…

Battery

When you are going to choose a laptop, you will be confronted in the technical characteristics with the data concerning the battery. Just like the power supply for a desktop or workstation, the battery is generally not configurable when you choose your components. However, you can find in the technical specifications its power in Wh as well as the number of cells of which it is composed. These two data are generally correlated. Unsurprisingly, the more power your battery has, the greater its energy storage capacity and therefore the longer its life will be. We mean by life expectancy we mean how long your device will be used per full recharge cycle (its autonomy if you prefer) and not the number of recharge cycles supported. However, you will have to observe the configuration of your computer because the larger the screen and the more powerful its components will be, the more energy it will require to operate. As a general rule, you will benefit from a more powerful battery on the biggest and most powerful laptops. However, we can assume that small configurations coupled with relatively small screens (between 11” and 13” diagonal) have a battery life two to three times greater than the most powerful configurations coupled with the largest screens (17” diagonal).

Docking station

A docking station is a hub that allows you to connect your laptop to a large number of peripherals and often remains permanently on your desktop. The idea here is to connect all these peripherals via a single cable and not have to rewire a multitude of connections every time you need to take your laptop to another office or outside appointment. What’s more, you are no longer limited by the number of ports available on your computer. Dock stations allow you to connect multiple monitors, multiple USB devices, charge devices, or connect to an Internet or corporate network.