Choosing a cooling system for PC | Articles | Computer technology

When buy­ing a desk­top com­put­er, espe­cial­ly when it comes to a seri­ous gam­ing or high-pow­er com­put­ing device, the cool­ing sys­tem is fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant. And this deci­sion should not be made hasti­ly, since this fac­tor will play a role when you are going to over­clock the proces­sor for greater per­for­mance. A weak and low-qual­i­ty cool­er can also fail to work at the right time and lead to over­heat­ing and even proces­sor fail­ure.

Cool­er prob­lems also lead to throt­tling — a loss of pow­er when the heat is too high to give the proces­sor a chance to cool down.

Anoth­er prob­lem strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the cool­ing sys­tem is the noise lev­el. High-qual­i­ty cool­ers will be quite qui­et, while cheap or not very pow­er­ful ones will be noisy.

How well do you know what pow­er and fea­tures you need? If you are just get­ting acquaint­ed with com­put­er cool­ers, then we have some­thing to tell you.

Source: Steam

cooler types

To begin with, it is worth decid­ing on the sim­plest dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of cool­ing sys­tems. They are divid­ed into liq­uid and air.

If we con­sid­er a more detailed dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion, then CPU cool­ers can be divid­ed into three main cat­e­gories: only air, AIO (all-in-one) or closed cool­ing sys­tems, and cus­tom or open sys­tems. The first, respec­tive­ly, is a cool­er using a fan, and the oth­er two are based on liq­uid cool­ing.

Source: Newegg.com

Air coolers

Every­one who has ever dis­as­sem­bled a com­put­er or at least removed the cov­er of a sys­tem unit is famil­iar with air cool­ers. These are the same ordi­nary fans of var­i­ous capac­i­ties, which are fixed both on the proces­sor and on the video card.

They work accord­ing to the fol­low­ing prin­ci­ple: the fan is mount­ed on a radi­a­tor, which, in turn, is mount­ed on a mate­r­i­al with high heat con­duc­tiv­i­ty, such as cop­per or alu­minum. Also, their effi­cien­cy is affect­ed by the shape, mate­r­i­al and strength of the blades, since the break­age of the cool­er blade leads to the loss of func­tion­al­i­ty of the entire device.

The pow­er of air cool­ers also varies, so it is worth pay­ing spe­cial atten­tion to whether the cool­er is able to cope with your requests. There are sev­er­al rec­om­men­da­tions regard­ing pow­er that should be fol­lowed.

For office com­put­ers that are not designed to solve com­plex prob­lems, low pow­er is enough — up to 45 watts. For com­put­ers designed to watch movies and videos, surf the web and down­load pages, you will need high­er pow­er — up to 65 watts. On aver­age, 80 — 120 watts is need­ed for gam­ing com­put­ers and more than 120 watts will be need­ed for a device to per­form com­put­ing tasks, work with demand­ing games and an over­clocked proces­sor.

Air cool­ers are also divid­ed by design into three types. The clas­sic form is used in office and home com­put­ers that are not sub­ject to high loads. Now this type is con­sid­ered rel­a­tive­ly out­dat­ed, but such cool­ers are reli­able and afford­able. Their dis­ad­van­tages include low pow­er and high noise lev­els.

Top Flow cool­ers dis­trib­ute air in a dif­fer­ent way, per­pen­dic­u­lar to the sur­face of the proces­sor board. Thus, the cool­er cools not only the proces­sor itself, but also the space near the sock­et. Such cool­ers are low­er and more com­pact than clas­sic ones, and their pow­er is notice­ably high­er. In some mod­els, such as the Scythe Choten SCCT-1000, heat pipes are pro­vid­ed in the radi­a­tor design.

Tow­er cool­ers are more expen­sive than oth­er fan cool­ers and also use heat pipes that con­nect the base of the cool­er and the heatsink. The air flow is direct­ed along the moth­er­board to the heatsink.

Source: Tech­Sit­ting

liquid coolers

Water cool­ers use a spe­cial heat pipe to dis­till liq­uid for cool­ing. Despite the pop­u­lar­iza­tion of such a sys­tem in the last few years, it has been used for a very long time, since about 1982. The sys­tem con­sists of a water block — a met­al plate in con­tact with a heat­ing ele­ment, a pump for pump­ing water and a water-air radi­a­tor. The prin­ci­ple of oper­a­tion is also tied to the liq­uid, since it is it that is used to trans­fer heat to the radi­a­tor. A typ­i­cal cool­er for this type of cool­ing is much small­er in size than the oth­ers. Also, the tubes them­selves for dis­till­ing liq­uid take up lit­tle space. Plus, such cool­ing can func­tion not only for the CPU, but also in a com­plex way. True, this requires an open-loop cool­ing sys­tem. We will talk about it a lit­tle lat­er.

The main advan­tage of liq­uid cool­ers is their effi­cien­cy. On aver­age, the pow­er of such a cool­ing sys­tem is high­er than that of a stan­dard fan cool­er. Hot air is vent­ed in such a way that the risk of dam­age to oth­er ele­ments is min­i­mized.

Anoth­er plus is qui­et oper­a­tion. While the fans cre­ate a lot of noise, the water cool­er, if not com­plete­ly silent, does not exceed the aver­age sound lev­el of the devices in the apart­ment.

It can­not be said that such cool­ers do not have dis­ad­van­tages: one of them is the high cost, which grad­u­al­ly, though not quick­ly, decreas­es. Ser­vice is also essen­tial. You can’t just install a liq­uid cool­ing sys­tem and expect it to last for­ev­er.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, in some cas­es, the oper­a­tion of liq­uid cool­ers is asso­ci­at­ed with leaks, as a result of which the fill­ing of the device may suf­fer. Just this is pre­vent­ed by care of the sys­tem.

In addi­tion to the closed cool­ing sys­tem, which is sold ready-made and installed quite eas­i­ly, there is also a cus­tom sys­tem. It is designed for user requests, there­fore it is the most expen­sive and dif­fi­cult in terms of instal­la­tion and oper­a­tion. It is also called an open-loop cool­ing sys­tem. Odd­ly enough, it is a cus­tom cool­er that gives the most effec­tive results, which are hard to com­pare with oth­er types. Thanks to such a sys­tem, it is pos­si­ble to imme­di­ate­ly and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly solve all cool­ing issues, cov­er­ing both the proces­sor and the video card.

There is one advan­tage of liq­uid cool­ing sys­tems that appeals main­ly to gamers. This is the visu­al aspect. The tubes look very impres­sive, espe­cial­ly if they are equipped with illu­mi­na­tion, and not sim­ple trans­par­ent water flows through them, but a tint­ed liq­uid. How­ev­er, cool­ing flu­ids are also worth pay­ing atten­tion to.

Source: ekwb.com

Liquid

In order for the water cool­ing sys­tem to work sta­bly, a con­stant cir­cu­la­tion of liq­uid is car­ried out in it. The flu­id must be changed peri­od­i­cal­ly, and it is rec­om­mend­ed to do this every six months or a year.

The main and most com­mon liq­uid is ordi­nary dis­tilled water, but it is this use that can lead to leaks and cor­ro­sion. How­ev­er, water also gives the high­est cool­ing results, so it is cho­sen only by those who plan to care­ful­ly and care­ful­ly care for the entire sys­tem in order to pre­vent trou­ble. In most cas­es, it is rec­om­mend­ed not to use water.

There­fore, more advanced users pre­fer to pour spe­cial liq­uids into the CBO. Such liq­uids do not con­duct cur­rent and do not cause dam­age to the ele­ments. Such liq­uids are more vis­cous than water and have a dif­fer­ent com­po­si­tion. True, each of the pop­u­lar flu­id mod­els also has its draw­backs.

One exam­ple is Flu­id XP+ Ultra, a food grade flu­id that is com­plete­ly non-tox­ic and non-cor­ro­sive. How­ev­er, dur­ing oper­a­tion, it caus­es more noise than oth­er types of liq­uid.

MCT-40 flu­id, in turn, has a spe­cif­ic chem­i­cal smell and col­or, which will not suit users who pre­fer a styl­ish look of the flu­id. In terms of func­tion­al­i­ty, the liq­uid is of high qual­i­ty, but not the most bud­get price.

Fes­er One gives the same results as dis­tilled water, while offer­ing a fair­ly wide range of col­or options.

Source: PCGamesN

Choosing the Right Cooling System

In most cas­es, the cool­er-fan is still the most func­tion­al option. Most users will pre­fer not to change the ele­ments inside the PC for a long time, and not wor­ry about their con­di­tion. This can only be guar­an­teed when using fan cool­ers.

Closed-type CBOs cer­tain­ly out­per­form a stan­dard cool­er in pow­er, but is such supe­ri­or­i­ty enough to jus­ti­fy the expense and asso­ci­at­ed risks? By itself, such a sys­tem is very safe, how­ev­er, as a rule, there are no guar­an­tees. There­fore, it is more prof­itable to choose the first option.

An open type CBO will attract users with its effi­cien­cy indi­ca­tor, how­ev­er, it is rec­om­mend­ed to use it only for those who know why they need such a cool­er. Be it games that require high com­put­er and video card pow­er, com­pu­ta­tion­al or graph­ic process­es that require CPU per­for­mance, etc. Plus, any own­er of a liq­uid cool­ing sys­tem should be pre­pared not only for the one-time cost of pur­chas­ing a cool­er, but also for the time and mate­r­i­al resources that will be required to main­tain the sys­tem in work­ing con­di­tion and ensure safe­ty for oth­er devices and com­put­er stuff­ing ele­ments.

Thus, it is the time-test­ed option that is the most attrac­tive.

Cool­er Mas­ter Hyper 212 is one of the most pop­u­lar cool­er mod­els. This is a pow­er­ful fan cool­er that fea­tures easy instal­la­tion and styl­ish appear­ance. In total, two options are avail­able to choose from — black and RGB with trans­par­ent blades and col­ored back­light. The dif­fer­ence between the two options is also in the num­ber of blades: black has five, RGB has nine. The device is com­pat­i­ble with Asus, ASRock, Giga­byte and MSI moth­er­boards, and the cost is rel­a­tive­ly low.

Cor­sair Hydro Series H100i Pro is one of the most pop­u­lar CPU hydro cool­ers. It’s a closed cool­er, but that does­n’t mean back­light fans will be dis­ap­point­ed, the pump looks styl­ish, and the fans are effi­cient and con­trolled with a sim­ple soft­ware that con­trols the amount of cool­ing and the oper­a­tion of spe­cif­ic fans. The device costs on aver­age, 2 times more expen­sive than a clas­sic cool­er, but you will be sat­is­fied with the results.

Hav­ing decid­ed on your require­ments, you can choose the most suit­able option for your PC.