cooling system in pc

PC Cooling Method

There are a number of cooling methods. Each of them has its own advantages and disadvantage.

Active Air Cooling

This method can be considered as the cheapest and the most commonly used method for cooling a computer. It has a cooling plate and a fan. The fan blows air on the plate over the component to be cooled. The cooling plate consists of a flat surface that touches the component to be cooled. A number of fins are attached on the other side and those fins increase the surface of the plate. As a result, the heat exchange capability of the plate is also increased.

Active air cooing is an efficient way of cooling in terms of power saving. Disadvantage: It can only reduce the temperature of a part to a level that are always higher than its surrounding temperature. This is a major problem specially when the computer is operated in a hard environments (i.e. the surrounding temperature is very high). In this case the temperature may not be reduced as required by a particular component.

Advantage: It is very cheap and energy-efficient (i.e. uses less power to operate). It is easy to maintain the system. One can easily replace the faulty fan that involves very less cost.

Passive Air Cooling

In passive air cooling, a plate is used as mentioned in active cooling. But the plate is much bigger in size than the ones in active air cooling. This is because there is no fan to blow within the fins. The fins should be large enough and should have adequate space between them to allow the natural flow of air.

Disadvantage: Weight and size are the main problems of this system. Since a heavy and large plates are fixed over a smaller area (i.e. component to be cooled), it increased the total weight of the computer. It also reduces usable area inside the case.

Advantage: The reliability of this system is very high. Moreover the maintenance cost is as low as 0.

Water Cooling

This is relatively a new technique for cooling computer systems.

The components of this system are:

Cooling plates

Hoses that the coolant (that makes component cool) flows within

A small tank for coolant

A circulation pump

A radiator

First the components that require cooling are identified. Then each of these components is connected to a cooling plate which is normally made of aluminum or copper. It is a hollowed plate with an input and output for the coolant. The pump circulates the coolant from the radiator, to the cooling plates, then to the tank and back to the radiator. The coolant will lower its temperature in the radiator.

Disadvantage: It requires high power to operate the pump. Reliability of the system is questionable in case of failure of the pump. In that case, the component temperature will rise instantly.

Advantage: It can rapidly reduce the temperature of the component into its ambient or even lower temperature when water cooling is used.

cooling system in pc