An Introduction to Adequate Cooling Methods - Deciding What Kind of Cooling to Use

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Since air cooling is the most common method, I'm sure everybody is familiar with it. Heat sinks are placed on the component producing heat to increase the surface area. Then a fan is helps to recycle the air. It is possible to use air cooling without fans, too. This is known as passive cooling.

When building or upgrading a system, we must decide what type of cooling we want to use for our system. This is a relatively easy question, but some people skimp on cooling and others go overboard. The best ways are rarely ever used by an average computer user, and very few pre-built systems use adequate setups. Stock coolers (supplied by AMD/Intel) aren't enough when strain is put on system or in case of overclocking.

Now the question is how to decide what kind of cooling to use. Well, first, we must think about the purpose of the computer, how it will be used (as a casual system or a 24/7 file server, for instance) and of course the load which will be put on it. There's a difference between a file server running 24/7 but barely reaching 10 percent CPU load and using almost no video processing power when compared with a hardcore gaming system running only six hours per day with 100 percent processor load using an SLi or Crossfire setup with two video cards. The dissipated heat will be significantly higher on the second setup.

When we've decided the system's purpose, the next question is whether you want an 'ultra quiet', 'somewhat silent', or 'I don't care about noise' setup. If you want an ultra quiet one, then I'd suggest going with water or passive cooling, although there are a wide variety of fans currently on the market that claim they are noiseless and quiet. When the system will not carry a constant load, so the amount of heat produced will be significantly lower, passive cooling is often enough. Check out the following photo of a passive heat sink, commonly used for the chipset...

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Comments On: An Introduction to Adequate Cooling Methods

· Now, I really hope that this article will help people to realize the importance of...    · Since it said introduction I can not wait for more!V-cards, RAM, mobo, Psu,......    · Good article, but CFM stands for 'cubic feet per minute, not meters.   >>> Post your comment now!

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