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Types of Cooling System for Your PC & How Do They Compare?

Cooling system is undoubtedly a prerequisite to your PC; otherwise your PC components will overheat, leading to performance degradation or even melting of components due to excessive heat. In the age of performance it is more significant than ever as a better cooling system equals to better performance. You, the user, always want the bang for your bucks and squeeze every bit of performance you can without putting your expensive PC in danger. Then having knowledge about PC cooling will come in handy for you. Either you want to overclock or just want to enjoy a worriless gaming session; cooling is important.

There are mainly 2 types of cooling system

  • Active Cooling System
  • Passive Cooling System

Back in the old days, the passive cooling system was more prevalent as the system didn’t produce much heat. But with the advancement of technology came the superior computation power and in turn drew more power. As a result systems started to generate more heat, needing extra cooling to keep the components from getting fried. Now let’s take a look at active and passive cooling.

Passive Cooling

In passive cooling the components of a PC are cooled with the natural surrounding air flow. There is no extra fan used to cool the CPU or other components rather a heatsink is used to dissipate the heat in the air from the CPU. A thermal component such as thermal paste is used between the contact of the CPU and the heatsink in order to accommodate heat transfer. Rest of the workload was given to the natural air flow.

This system of cooling has lower efficiency as it relies on the environment to carry out heat faster or slower. If the environment were cooling enough then the system would be cool but in a warm environment the system would heat up.

Active Cooling

This type of cooling employs the method of active air circulation in order to dissipate heat. As an active source of airflow fans can be used or liquid cooling can be employed to carry out heat then dissipate with the help of radiator fans.

Active cooling has the option of controlling the temperature set to maintain. Temperature can easily be cooled down or raised as necessary. Unlike Passive Cooling, Active Cooling doesn’t solely rely on the surrounding airflow to cool down the system. But it requires power which isn’t necessary in the passive cooling system.

Nowadays for the cooling of your PC, a compact system is used meaning both the active and passive cooling system are used simultaneously to cool your PC.

Most common systems of cooling methods employed in modern PCs are Air Cooling and Liquid Cooling. Especially for the components that heat up pretty quickly and draw a large amount of power.

CPUs and GPUs draw most of the power in a PC so they need the extra cooling system compared with other components. But memory chips such as RAMs and SSD also run hot. Even though these small components don’t draw much power they sometimes run hot for that passive cooling system is used. As a result modern high performance RAMs and SSDs have heat sinks attached to them to dissipate heat faster by increasing the rate of passive cooling.

Let’s take a look at Air Cooling and Liquid Cooling. How do they compare to each other?

Air Cooling

This method is the simpler of the two. Air cooling just requires heatsink and a fan. Without hassle free it can deliver a good performance cooling down your CPU. There is a thermal paste that sits between the CPU and the heatsink of the fan.

Upsides

  • Cheaper than liquid cooling
  • Easy to maintain
  • Easier to clean
  • Simple installation
  • Fans can be changed

Downsides

  • Less efficient than liquid cooling counterpart
  • Gets noisy when the fan runs at high speed
  • During high stress can get hot 
  • Depends on the ambient temperature of the room
  • Not as pleasing to the eyes

Liquid Cooling

A complex system that consists of water blocks, pump, radiator, pipes and reservoir. The water block is attached to the CPU and thermal paste is applied between the two to conduct heat from the CPU to the waterblock. Liquid coolant is pumped into the water block for carrying out heat from the CPU to the radiator. The coolant is cycled through pumping and reaches the radiator to dissipate the heat from the CPU. Liquid coolant moves through the pipes. Additionally a reservoir can be set up for longer service.

Upsides

  • More heat carrying capacity
  • More efficient in cooling performance
  • Good for high performance equipment
  • No noise from the fans
  • Looks aesthetic

Downsides

  • Costlier as there are more parts in a liquid cooling system
  • Coolant needs to be changed regularly
  • High maintenance
  • Requires proper cleaning
  • Harder to install
  • Risk of liquid coolant leaking if it’s of bad quality or faulty installation

One has to choose their preferred cooling system based on their needs. There are both great options for liquid and air cooling systems out in the market. If you can sacrifice a bit of performance you can get the hassle free air cooling system. But if you are an enthusiast who likes the looks, performance and feeling then liquid cooling is for you.

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