Cooling is integral to any modern computer. Whenever a calculation is made, a little bit of heat is generated as a by-product. When millions of calculations are being performed every second by a tiny processing unit, a great deal of heat is generated. And when that heat isn’t dissipated, the result can be a rapid escalation in electrical resistance that brings performance to a screeching halt.
The good news is that PC owners have plenty of options at their disposal when it comes to effective, quiet, and convenient cooling. Let’s take a look at a few worthwhile steps on the way to cooling bliss.
Start With Smart Airflow and Fan Placement
We should begin with the fundamentals. If air can’t flow through your case, then the motherboard won’t be able to benefit from all of the fans on your case. It’s partly for this reason that the humble cable tie is among the most underrated pieces of equipment that we have access to. Get those loose power cables sorted, and zip them into place. Make sure that you also open the case every now and again, to blast the dust away with compressed air.
Use Temperature Data to Make Cooling Smarter
A modern motherboard comes with a variety of temperature sensors. These can be used to monitor how hot it’s getting in various parts of the machine, and to diagnose chronic faults. The information you gather can be fed dynamically to the fans on the CPU, GPU, and the case. That way, you’ll get cooling performance when you need it, and quiet at other times.
Build Better Fan Curves Instead of Running Fans at Full Speed
A ‘fan curve’ is a simple function that plots the temperature detected by a sensor against the amount of power being fed to a fan. Different fans can be controlled in different ways. You might vary the voltage on a DC pin, or you might vary the duty cycle of a continuous pulse (in a practice known as Pulse Width Modulation).
Check how many pins there are on the cables leading to your fan. If there’s a fourth pin, then you have a PWM fan. If there are just three, then it’s a DC fan.
Choose the Right Cooling Architecture for the Build
Different builds might require different approaches to cooling. There are some impressive air coolers available, with reputable brands like Noctua having made significant advances (though the prices are often significant, too).
At the same time, you might look at all-in-one liquid-cooled systems, which benefit from a larger radiator that connects to the processing units via two pipes filled with special coolant. For maximum customization, however, it’s a custom loop of liquid coolant that you might consider.
Above all, make sure that your case offers enough space for your desired solution. If it doesn’t, you’ll run into difficulty very quickly.