Instructor: In this lesson,
we're going to talk about how you can cool down your system.
Now, all the different components inside of your computer
generate a certain amount of heat.
Things like, your power supply, your processor, your memory,
as well as all of your different expansion cards
are going to create different amount of heat
depending on how much processing power they have.
This is known as a thermal load.
Now, what we need to do is get that thermal load reduced,
because if it gets too high,
it can actually burn up our motherboard
and its sensitive components.
To do this, we're going to use a mixture
of passive and active cooling.
Passive cooling is a type of cooling
that's going to rely on components
that don't have any moving parts or power.
For example, a heat sink can be a passive device.
A heat sink is essentially a finned metal device
that's going to radiate heat
away from the processor and other components
and give it additional surface area
so that the natural cooling inside of the case can occur.
Think about it like this.
Let's say, I'm going to give you a cup of hot soup.
That cup of soup is only a small amount,
but it's really, really hot.
And because it's in a small area,
all that heat is being concentrated
inside of that small cup.
But if I take that same amount of liquid,
and I spread it out across a dinner plate,
it's going to have more surface area,
and it's going to end up cooling down quicker
based on the ambient temperature around it
being able to reach more of that liquid at once.
And this additional surface area
is what allows it to cool faster.
And that's exactly what passive heat sinks do.
They give more surface area
to your processor or other components
by applying this finned metal device on top of it.
Now to help increase the amount of thermal transfer
from the processor or other devices into these heat sinks,
we're going to first apply something known as a thermal paste.
Now a thermal paste is essentially a compound
that's going to ensure better heat transfer
by eliminating any kind of air gaps that may exist.
This thermal paste is going to act
as a phase change material
and help take the heat out of the processor
and into the heat sink,
where it then gets that additional surface area
provided by the heat sink
and cools to the ambient temperature.
This is the idea of how passive cooling works.
Now it would be great
if we could use passive cooling for everything,
because passive cooling requires no power to operate
and it is silent when it's operating.
But unfortunately our CPU's processors and other components
can create entirely too much heat
to be able to dissipate all of it using passive components.
So in those cases, we need to move into active cooling.
Now active cooling occurs
anytime you're going to be using a fan
to be able to cool down your devices.
When you deal with active cooling,
you're going to have to provide power to that fan,
and that fan is then going to spin at a certain revolution.
The faster that fan spins,
the more airflow is going to be created,
and this allows more heat to be dissipated.
Now, if you're using a large processor or graphics card,
you're going to see that they're going to be multiple fans.
For example, we have a fan sitting on top of our processor
as part of an active heat sink.
This will combine the benefits of a passive heat sink
by giving you that additional surface area,
but then also including fans
to draw air over that heat sink in an active manner,
to be able to release that heat out of the heat sink
and into the rest of the case.
Addition to that,
you may have one or more case fans included
in your tower as well,
and this will help get the heat from inside the tower
and push it out of the case and into the rest of your room.
By doing this, we're getting more cold air into the case
and pushing that hot air out of the case,
increasing that airflow and dropping the temperature.
This is a great way to dissipate a lot of heat very fast.
Another place you're commonly going to see fans used
is in the back of your power supply.
Now, when we talk more about power supplies
you're going to learn how power is taken
from a high voltage AC and converted into a low voltage DC
for use by our components.
And that process actually generates quite a bit of heat.
So all power supplies are going to include a fan inside of them
to be able to pull cool air in over that power supply
and expel out the hot air
out the backside of the power supply and out of the case
to help dissipate all that extra heat.
The final place you'll find these fans located
is going to be on your external graphics cards.
For example, if you have a PCI Express x16 card
plugged into your motherboard,
that card may have one, two, or even three different fans
located directly on that card
to cool down your graphical processing unit
included on that expansion card.
Anytime you have a component that generates a lot of heat
you can look around near it,
and see that there's either a fan on top of that component
or very close to it
to dispel that heat and get it away from that device.
Now, when it comes to active cooling and fans,
one of the things you need to be aware of
is that these fans can have dust build up on them over time.
If too much dust builds up on them,
this can cause those fans to slow down or even break
under that excessive load.
So one of the best practices
is that once every three to six months
you should open up your computer
and blow out any of the excess dust and debris
to get that out of the case and away from those fans.
This will help the fans run more efficiently
and be able to get more airflow going through that computer.
Remember, when you're dealing with active cooling,
you're almost always going to be relying
on a fan-based system.
And it's important to ensure there's good airflow
that's happening through that case
and over those components to cool those things down.
Now, the final thing I want to mention
is when we install our CPUs and processors,
how are we going to make sure they are properly cooled?
Now we've already mentioned in this lesson
a couple of these components
that we're going to use to cool down the processor,
including a heat sink, which is a passive component,
as well as fans, which are an active component
and thermal paste, which helps transfer heat
from the processor to the heat sink.
Now, whenever you're installing a new CPU,
you want to be able to place it into the CPU socket first,
and then apply thermal paste to the top of it.
When you're applying thermal paste,
you only need a small amount.
Generally, it's about the size of a green pea.
Once you place that in, you'll then take the heat sink,
and put it on top of the thermal paste
and press that down,
which will spread the thermal paste
across the top of the processor.
Once that heat sink is in place,
you can then attach the CPU fans to the heat sink,
which will pull the heat away from the processor.
Now in addition to that,
you want to make sure your case fans
are properly installed as well,
because that processor fan is pulling the heat
and putting it into the center of the case.
But if we have that without any case fans,
all the other components are going to start heating up as well.
So that case fan then takes that heat from the processor
through the heat sink, through that CPU fan,
and then pushes it out the back of the case
using your case fans.
So keep in mind, we have two main types of cooling.
We have passive cooling and active cooling.
When we're dealing with passive cooling,
we're dealing with heat sinks and thermal paste.
And when we're dealing with active cooling,
we're dealing with things like case fans, processor fans,
and other things like that
to increase the airflow across that system.