Buying a New Heat Sink for Your CPU
Author: Aatu Harju
If you are performing tasks requiring high performance from your computer such as top-end gaming or graphical computer-aided design (CAD), your computer can occasionally suffer from bad performance. This can be a sign your computer needs a hardware upgrade but may also indicate inadequate cooling.
There are several ways to cool down your computer. One of the common ways going to be discussed here is to upgrade your processor heat sink and fan because those coming with new processors meet their limits very quickly.
When looking for a new heat sink, there are a couple factors that are prevalent in virtually all good products. The product should be made of something that is conductive enough such as copper or aluminum. Even though stock heat sinks are made of aluminum, their overall design is bad for effective heat transfer.
Good heat sinks do not always win by the material choice but often have a complex design with a large surface area to emit the heat from making them often boast in size and that is why a buyer should make sure that a specific model will fit into his or her computer case.
Processors usually come with small fans and it is one of the main reasons for vacuum cleaner type of sound when the computer is stressed enough. Separately bought quality heat sinks also come with fans large enough not to emit annoying noise. This is simply because a large fans do not have to spin as fast as smaller fans fast to achieve the same level of ventilation.
In addition to the newly acquired heat sink, you will need thermal paste between it and the the processor. Thermal grease, or paste, fills the small naturally occurring rough spots on these two parts and enhances the heat transfer between them. Different thermal greases are made of ceramic, metal, carbon and liquid metal materials and they are all considerable alternatives.
One of the reasons processors cooling is widely thought as the first step into sufficient computer cooling is because of the easy installation process. Installing the heat sink requires some dexterity but the real challenge comes in when the thermal grease is applied. One common mistake is to apply too much of the grease and seeing that the processor temperature values haven not changed after all and this is because the grease is now slowing down the heat flow instead of conducting it efficiently.
The rules to remember when applying thermal grease are that one tube of thermal grease should usually be enough for about ten processors and the main idea as previously said, is to fill the rough spots of the heat sink and the processor, nothing else. With these two pieces of advice in mind, thermal grease will be easier to spread properly.
Temperature values are glad to be seen settle down after fighting with them. Surrendering to buy a new heat sink can save both your nerves and the lifetime of your computer. For more information on computer cooling, visit http://www.gaming-computer-guide.com/silent-pc.html
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