Cooling your Computer: CPU Cooling

Written by Guest Writer. Steven N: An aspect of computers that is overlooked many people is the cooling aspect. If a system does not have proper cooling, a lot of things could go wrong. You NEED adequate cooling if you want your computer to run smoothly. This article talks about cooling your computers CPU.

If your computer overheats, you will see major changes in performance. Everything will run slow. Sometimes it will crash out of nowhere.
Here’s a list of the parts that generate heat and need to be cooled from greatest to least.

1. CPU/Processor
2. inside the case (air flow)
3. Video Card
4. Motherboard Chipset
5. Power Supply
6. Hard Drive
7. RAM/Memory

The most important part to cool is the processor because it generates ALOT of heat. If it is poorly cooled, it is going to die in the future.

Deciding which heatsink

The 2 materials that heatsinks are made out of are copper and aluminum. Aluminum is cheaper and lighter, but does not cool as efficiently as copper. Copper heatsinks are more expensive and heavier. You might have noticed that heatsinks have tubes on them now. Those tubes are heat pipes. In those pipes, there is a bit of coolant. Heatsinks with heat pipes are better than those with just fins.

Note: stock heatsinks that processor manufacturers include in retail boxes are no good. They are loud and don’t cool too well. There is 1 exception to that though. The AMD heatsink for X2 and some Opteron Dual Core processors are very quiet and cool very well for a stock heatsink.

Some brands I suggest for heatsinks:
1. Zalman – VERY VERY quiet and performs very well.
2. Thermalright – Very good performance but you have to buy your own fan
3. Coolermaster – Been around for a while, they made the heatsinks for AMD mentioned above.
4. Tuniq – Relatively new company. An offshoot of the company Sunbeam
5. Thermaltake – Some products are decent though they are kind of shady when it comes to the specifications on the box. Their old products are horrible but they are starting to get better.
6. Swiftech – Decent heatsinks. They dominate the water cooling area.

Thermal paste/grease/compound

When you have a heatsink, you are going to need some thermal paste. The reason you need thermal paste is because there are microscopic imperfections on the heatsink. These imperfections are little holes. The thermal paste is to fill up those holes so there is proper contact between the heatsink and CPU die. If you want to remove thermal paste/compound, use rubbing alcohol and rub it off with paper towels. There is also a product by Arctic Silver made specifically to remove thermal paste which is better than regular rubbing alcohol but costs more. The industry standard for thermal paste is Arctic Silver 5 but there is a new thermal grease made by Zalman called the Super Thermal Grease which supposedly is the best in the market right now, but there are not too many reviews out yet.

To apply thermal paste, clean off the bottom of the heatsink and the die of the CPU. Then apply a rice grain sized amount onto the CPU die. Some people apply the paste all around the CPU die but I prefer my method because the paste is going to move when you put the heatsink on.

The max temperature you should be getting is 50 degrees Celsius. If it is above 50 Celsius, there is something wrong. Make sure the heatsink is making proper contact with the CPU. Try reseating it. Usually my processors run at around 40 Celsius.

Long term use

After a while, you may notice that the temperature on your processor is starting to rise. There are a couple reasons why. One, your thermal paste needs to be reapplied. Two, there might be too much dust inside your computer. Grab an aerosol can and blow all the dust out. You can find these cans at all electronics stores. And three, your heatsink fan might be dying which is rare because fans have a long lifespan.