Cooling Systems

PCs generate a lot of heat – the CPU, hard drive, video card, processing chips, etc. put out a ton of heat in a small enclosed space. The computer system must properly maintain a reasonable temperature or things could – literally – melt down. There are several different type of cooling systems available for PCs with two primary methods: air and liquid.

The most common cooling method is a series of fans designed to blow heat away from heatsinks on the CPU and video cards – the two biggest heat generators in the system.

Figure 14: Fancy Heatsink

A heatsink is designed to disperse the tremendous amount of heat generated on chips in a system. Typically, a heatsink has a fan attached to it to blow the heat away from the CPU and allow it to maintain a reasonable temperature.

Liquid Cooling Systems

A technology which is currently used by high end computer systems is liquid cooling.

Liquid cooling uses water or another liquid to cool the system and maintain proper temperatures.