Heat. We all love the heat during the summer, lounging out by the pool or basking in the sunlight on the beach. But heat can be deadly, especially to your costly computer components. This week we are going to talk about the basics of cooling your computer system and its components.
1. Why Is It So Hot In There?
Computers are built out of many digital circuits. These circuits are constantly switching state; i.e., when doing calculations. Heat is a byproduct of these calculations. Computer chips, central processing units (CPUs), and graphic processing units (GPUs) are getting more powerful every day. With newer technology comes faster processing. Faster processing leads to more heat being generated. Without proper heat dissipation, your CPU [http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ADA3700AEP5AR-N&cat=CPU] can be damaged beyond repair.
2. Going Down the (Heat) Sink
The first line of defense in this war against heat is a heat sink. It’s just a big chunk of metal that dissipates heat from your CPU and spreads it out across its surface. The idea is to spread the heat to a larger surface area and let the air pick up the heat and whisk it away.
The surface area of a heat sink is created by many fins. The traditional heat sink is made of aluminum and has many parallel fins. Aluminum can be easily extruded with straight parallel fins. The problem with this design is that air can only move through the fins in one direction, creating a problem for air flow within a computer case.
Download pdf Computer Cooling Tips, Part I
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