When we talk about PCs, it's not possible to not to talk about hardware: "hardware parts," "hardware drivers," "hardware upgrades," and so on. But what is hardware when it comes to computers?
Hardware are the physical components of a computer. All the components that you can touch are hardware. The term is used in contrast with software, which are the virtual components necessary for a computer to perform de computation of something. That is, programs made out of bytes are software, and everything that isn't made of bytes is hardware.
Examples of "Hardware"
All chips are hardware. Everything inside the PC case is hardware: the motherboard is hardware; the hard disk drives (HDDs), solid state drives (SSDs) are hardwares; CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, floppy disks and their drives are hardware; USB sticks and USB ports, and ports for other connectors are hardware; RAM and ROM memories, the graphics card, the sound card, the internet card, etc. are all hardware. Even the power supply unit (PSU), that doesn't even do anything computation-related but is necessary for the computer to function, counts as a piece of hardware.
Besides these, input and output devices connected to the computer are also hardware: the keyboard, the mouse, joysticks, drawing tablets, the monitor, speakers, scanners, printers, microphones, webcams, etc. The modem and router are also hardware.
Not all hardware is of a PC. The hardware is a physical component where software is installed. Since there are softwares for cellphones, that means the cellphone is a hardware, smartphones are hardware, tablets are hardware, smart televisions, which can have applications inside of them, are hardware, and so on. Naturally, laptops and notebooks are hardware as well.
Although these devices are technically hardware, just like a giant machine in a hospital of factory running a software would be hardware, normally when people talk about electronic "hardware" they're talking about PC parts, generally the ones inside the PC case, since these hardware pieces can stop working, can be replaced, can be purchased and sold separately. In the case of smartphones, for example, nobody goes to a store buy a graphics card of a smartphone. The smartphone is sold whole. Either you buy the whole thing, or you don't. When it comes to PCs, it's possible to replace an internal part without replacing the entire PC, and for these parts the term hardware tends to be used.
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