Computer Cooling 101: What Your Computer Needs to Stay Cool

Most tech lovers have air conditioners for regulating their own body temperatures but think nothing about computer cooling. Unregulated temperatures cause computers to fry. However, some basic computer knowledge and a few inexpensive items will ensure your computer stays running for many years to come.

The Basics

Computer processors work hard to run programs and operations. Consequently, they heat up fast and must have a buddy to help relieve the stress. Heatsinks are a best friend to computer processors because they take the heat.

Made of copper or aluminium, heatsinks zap hot air out of processors so they can continue running programs without becoming overstressed. Since copper is a better conductor, copper heatsinks do a better job absorbing heat. Copper is, however, heavy and causes strain on motherboards. For this reason, less durable motherboards are better off with a lightweight aluminium heatsink.

Heatsinks are great, but…

For this reason, an additional fan is needed to move hot air from the inside of your computer to the exterior. Most heatsinks are passive because they have one fan for drawing heat out of the computer. However, active heatsinks have two fans for moving air out into the atmosphere.

Heatsinks come in a 120 or 140-mm size, while fans are around 25mm with a 3 or 4 pin configuration. You can find the proper sized cooling components by looking at your existing hardware. If your building new PC, however, you’ll need to do a google search to find the cooling elements suggested for your individual motherboard.

It’s Time To Upgrade

The fan from your old computer might be working just fine. However, older cooling elements cannot manage the extra heat generated by newer and more powerful technology. Therefore, if you’ve purchased a new graphics card, processor, or motherboard, you will need a new fan and heatsink for computer cooling.

No fan is 100% quiet, but excessive noise is a symptom of a bigger problem.

• The fan may be loose. In such a case, you just need to tighten the fan down so it doesn’t make too much noise.
• The fan is not rotating as it should. In this case, you need to buy a new fan because it’s not doing a good job.

Since heatsinks absorb heat from processors, they melt over time. Melted heat sinks expose your computers to excess heat causing irreversible damage to motherboards and processors. Check your heatsink for imperfections. If it’s worn out, replace it!

Likewise, many fans start running slower over time. This also damages computers. Symptoms of a slow fan include:

• Computers that will not power up (When BIOS does not recognize the speed of your fan, it will prevent the computer from starting)
• Computers that shut off without warning (Pentium processors will shut off to protect vial parts from being damaged by excess heat. However, even short-term heat expose does damage to computers).

Don’t wait for your computer to fry! Visit memoryC.com to find the perfect fan and/or heatsink for your computer.

Top Sellers

ARCTIC Alpine 64 GT Processor Cooler

Cooler Master Hyper H412R 92mm CPU Cooler

Scythe FUMA 2 120mm CPU Cooler

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