From CIT Wiki

Computer Cooling and You

So you see that box under your desk? The thing your monitor plugs into? That’s your computer. Or perhaps it’s the notebook that is under your fingers. Either way – all computers, be they Macs, Dells, HPs, or something you built yourself, have one thing (if not more) in common: they all produce HEAT. That’s why, if you listen closely you’ll hear the whirring of fans. Those fans exist to cool your computer and stop it from melting.

Heat is O.K. – a certain amount of heat is expected and tolerable for all computers. However, if the heat is not removed from the computer (by fans or some other means), it can build up and do serious damage to your machine.

In this article you will learn the fundamentals of cooling your computer, the warning signs to keep an eye out for, and how to make that thing that stores all your papers and assignments just a little bit happier.

The Suspects

C-P-Who?

The primary component in your computer that produces heat is: your processor. The CPU (central processing unit) is the core of your system. This produces a large amount of heat – so much so that if the processor were to run by itself, it would melt under its own load. Therefore, processors have a big old slab of metal that touches the processor and absorbs the heat from the processor. Then the larger chunk of metal gets warm and is cooled by a fan. This is called a heatsink.

Why not blow a fan directly onto the processor? Because the heat load is so concentrated in such a small area that no fan could effectively cool it. By moving the heat from the processor into a much larger piece of metal (often with lots of ridges and fins to increase surface area) a low-noise fan is able to cool off the larger surface area.

Video Killed the…

The second most common heat producer in a computer is the video card. This is the device that, when you play video games or do other specific tasks, renders all of the animation. Now, not all video cards are created equal. Older and less powerful video cards produce quite a bit less heat. But today’s current crop of video cards might as well say “space heater” on the side. In fact, modern video cards often have heatsinks large enough to rival those on the processor.

Where your papers and music live

Hard Drives. Though not a huge contributor, hard drives work via spinning magnetic platters, and that spinning produces heat.

Fans: Your Friend

As mentioned above, if you listen to your computer or laptop, you will hear a whirring. Maybe its loud, maybe its quiet. Perhaps it’s high pitched? Who knows. The point is – you’ve got at least one fan in your computer, and it is saving your system on a regular basis.

A divergence must be made here: Notebook computers generally produce a lot less heat than desktop computers. Thus they need less cooling – which is good, because fans take up space. So most laptop computers only have one fan. Its small, often loud, and usually at a high frequency. Any modern laptop will regulate the fan due to the temperature of the computer. If the system is getting hot the fan will ramp up and chill things out. So if your laptop makes noise on and off, that is why.

Desktops are a whole different story. Processors, video cards, large power supplies, hard drives (maybe more than one?) – all of it adds up, and means that desktops require a much more serious cooling regiment than a notebook.

At a minimum you have a fan sitting on top of that heatsink which is connected to your processor. More than likely you also have a fan in the power supply of your computer, blowing air from the inside of the box to the outside. That may be all - 2 fans.

A vast majority of fans in a computer are 80mm. That refers to the diameter of the blades. Though these fans are ubiquitous, they are not at all the best option. Here's how it works:

• The smaller the fan, the faster it has to spin in order to cool your computer
• The smaller the fan, the higher pitched the noise it produces will be

Therefore, it is much more friendly to your ears if your computer uses 120mm fans, which are larger, and thus spin much slower. These fans produce much less noise for the same cooling potential.