Recognising hardware visually....

[machineman9]

I am building a games console as part of a Design and technology project at school.

My teacher says that despite working at near to an A-level level in GCSE, I should still try to push my ideas a bit further...

So, I am thinking of turning my prototype into a working thing. One of my friends is getting entered for a contest for making a FreeTrack headset, I want to make a 'working' games console just to give me the edge on the scores at the end of the course.

So yeh, I am going PC hunting this weekend if I can. There is a recycling plant down the road, often with a few computers there. I am hoping that they dont all have the same faults and that I can borrow some of their componants to recycle.

As most people know, you need the correct parts for things to work. Putting a core 2 duo on a P3 reccomending board wont really work, nor will using the wrong types of RAM.

Can someone tell me just how I can identify these parts? Is there a difference in the RAMs? Is DDR2 longer than DDR? What about the processor.... does that have it written on? The mobo typically has markings as I have seen....


So yeh, any ideas on how I can differentiate the parts?

Cheers