system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: What is a RAM in computers?
gpt
In the good ol' desk analogy, where the whole computer is a desk:

- the CPU is the person sitting at the desk, doing work

- the hard drives are the desk's drawers, or the filing cabinets by the wall behind the desk

- the memory (RAM) is the desk surface

The CPU (person sitting at the desk) works on documents (files stored in a computer). The documents they are working on are on the desk, their working area. Any document they're gonna be working on/with, they grab from the drawers or the filing cabinets and bring them up to the desk.

The desktop (the actual top of the physical desk in this analogy, not what you see on your monitor) is very easy for our worker person to reach, they're right there in front of him. Whereas the stuff in drawers/filing cabinets require a bit more time and effort to get to. The more desk space you have, the more stuff you can keep on your desk, so you don't have to spend as much time shuffling things around to make space for things you get in and out of drawers/filing cabinets as you work on different stuff.