Cooling Systems

Cooling System Management

A piece of the computer generally overlooked, the cooling system, provides necessary support to the hardware that runs your businesses and stores your pictures. A component running at higher temperatures then it is designed to run inevitably shortens its lifespan. If you run silicon too hot, it actually undergoes a process called electro migration and the pathways that were carved into it actually start to melt – greatly accelerating the death of the product.
With the revival of "turbo" technology: Intel's TurboBoost and Amd's TurboCore; cooling has once again brought the availability of higher performance based on how well your product is cooled. Intel's turbo boost will over clock to higher speed grades as long as its temperature needs are being met.
A typical computer case is designed to draw air in the lower front of the case and pull it over the hard drivers; the air is then pulled up from the low pressure created by the exhaust fan on the back. The air travels up across the Southbridge heatsink and is pulled in partially by the video card fan and the rest travels up toward the Northbridge and the CPU heatsink. The combination of the power supply and exhaust fan pull the air up and through the CPU heatsink and send it outside the case.

Power supply on the bottom arrangements generally are setup to aggressively pull in more air so that the airstream can be divided, and generally are more efficient and cool more effectively

Heavy gaming rigs require immense cooling and sometimes require intake fans to be mounted beside them to give adequate airflow.

Large passive heat sinks can be used, and even sometimes outperform fan based solutions if there is enough airflow. They also give a bonus of being completely silent.

Larger fans can move more air while running slower than smaller fans. The slower a fan runs the less noise it is going to make. A good set of 120s can effectively cool a standard PC while being nearly silent in the process...