- Program Counter valuecopied to the Memory Address Register - Control Unit loads the address onto the address bus and sends a signal to RAM to read the instruction at that address - Instruction at RAN address is passed across the data bus to the MDR - Instruction in the MDR is copied to the Current Instruction Register, ready to be decoded - Program Counter is incremented by one location, ready for next cycle - Instruction in Current Instruction Register is decoded by the Control Unit - Executed (usually in the accumulator)