Ever wandered what is a computer hardware? When you talk about computer hardware you talk about the physical components of the computer. While computers can have many hardware components the most common ones are the computer case, the monitor, the motherboard, the audio and video cards, the network interface card (NIC), the disk drives (the hard disk, CD, DVD), the various peripheral such as the keyboard and mouse as well as other computer external devices like the printer and the scanner.In other words the hardware part of a computer consists of everything the is inside the computer case along with any external devices and computer peripherals that connect to it.

The term computer hardware appeared as a way to distinguish the physical parts of the computer from the computer software which is the virtual part of the computer. One can also say that the hardware components refer to the parts of the computer that can be touched.If we were to consider the computer to a book, the pages and cover would be the hardware part while the words written would be the software. The hardware would be no more than an empty book while the written words would not be seen. In other words one without the other is pointless.

Computer hardware parts can actually be divided into two separate groups. One of these groups consists of the system unit which contains the motherboard, CPU, audio, video and network cards, hard disk and CD/DVD drive, RAM memory circuits, floppy disk, memory card readers, power source unit, fans and the the cabling that is used to connect all of these components between them. This is true only for some desktop computers. For notebooks and even some desktop computers some of these hardware components may be integrated on the motherboard. Among these hardware components we have the audio card, the video card and the network interface card, but not necessarily all of them at the same time. The other group is made of the external devices and peripherals that get connected to the system unit with cables or used other types of new technologies like Bluetooth to connect to it. These are the monitor, printer, scanner, keyboard, mouse, microphone, webcam and computer drawing tablet.

Although desktop computers can be disassembled into their respective computer hardware components, when it comes to notebooks however this is a lot harder. In their case hardware components are limited as a number. As previously mentioned hardware components like audio, video and network interface cards are fully integrated into the motherboard, and some motherboards even have the computer processor integrated into it. For notebooks the only hardware components are the motherboard with various hardware component integrated, the hard disk, optical drive (CD or DVD)  and RAM memory circuits. The monitor, keyboard and an equivalent of the mouse are fully integrated into it's design although external ones can be connected. External keyboard and mouse can be connected through USB ports while the external monitor can be connected through a standard VGA port if the notebook has one. Notebooks have most of the times sound speaker incorporated and a few even have  integrated microphone and webcam.

Therefore the parts of the computer that can get damaged when you throw them from a five story building are part of the computer hardware.