PC cooling fans – an Overview

Cpu Cooling Fans

A PC cooling fan is basically a fan which is located inside the case of a computer. These fans are used to cool the system and are classified into a number of categories.

While some cool the PC by extracting cool air from the outside, others remove the damaging heat from the system by dragging it out while the rest move the hot air from a particular point through a heatsink and cool the computer part.

Active cooling is the term that is used to describe this entire process.
Over the years, due to the advance in technology, new components have been introduced into the system of the PC. This includes additional processors, RAM and graphic cards.

This in turn has lead to an enhancement in the clock speed of the system as well as the power consumption. When all these components work together at the same time, a large amount of heat is generated. Naturally, in order to avoid a system breakdown, the temperature of these processors and cards should always be dialed down and kept at the lower side because when the system overheats, the entire functioning of system suffers and ultimately reduces the life of the PC.
When a system overheated a few years ago, one could make use of passive cooling for the purpose of cooling down the system. However, due to the physical make up and added complexities of modern components, it becomes necessary to adopt a more effective system which is what PC cooling fans are used for. These fans not only remove the hot air from the targeted component but they also replace this hot air with cool air.

PC cooling fans are often attached with heatsinks which make sure that the entire system cools down and not just the targeted part. This helps to keep future problems in check.
The most common computer parts that are vulnerable to damage due to overheating are chipset cards, CPUs, graphic cards and hard drives. Hard drives are known to crash due to over-cooling as well. Therefore, one must always be careful about the temperature modifications in this case.
As it has already been established, computer fans remove and pump in air. In this case, if there is an imbalance, that is, if more air is entering the system than leaving it, the problem may be due to the installation of extra fans. This process is termed “positive” air cooling because the pressure that is created inside is higher than the strain outside the system. On the other hand, if the process is reversed, the term used is “negative” air cooling which damages the integrated circuits due to clogging.
Therefore, it is essential that you purchase the right number of fans so that neutral or balance air cooling can be created. If you attach dust filters to the PC cooling fans, the build up of unnecessary dust can be reduced.
The most efficient cooling fans are manufactured by Akasa, Zalman, Arctic Cooling and Antec.