What term describes the physical components of a computer system?

The term that describes the physical components of a computer system is hardware. Hardware refers to all the tangible parts of a computer that you can physically touch and interact with, such as the motherboard, CPU, RAM, hard drives, graphics cards, and peripheral devices like keyboards and mice.

In contrast, software refers to the programs and operating systems that instruct the hardware on what to do. Firmware is a specialized type of software embedded into hardware devices that provides low-level control. The operating system is a software layer that manages hardware resources and provides a user interface. Understanding these distinctions is important because it highlights how hardware and software work together to form a complete computer system.