About Computer Fans
- Cooling the central processing unit (CPU) became widely implemented into computer by 1997. Exhaust fans became popular among computer engineers in 2000. These fans were installed at the back of the computer casing to expel heat. Fans are also located over the CPU, usually on the side of the computer (particularly in the design of computers with the Pentium-4 processor). Today, heat-sinks are directly attached or built in to some components.
- Heat that could cause damage your computer's components is expelled from the machine through vents. There can be multiple fans inside of your computer---usually the more, the better. More fans mean that your computer is less likely to overheat. The process of removing heat from the interior of a computer is called Active Cooling. Computers may be designed to have air move over a heat-sink to reduce the heat of vulnerable mechanisms (heat-sinks increase the mechanism's surface area exposed to cool air).
- Newer components work faster. As a consequence of this improvement in speed, the components tend to generate more heat than the components used in the older computers. Graphics cards consume more power, and the speed at which microprocessors execute instructions has increased. Because of these changes, convection has become a useless method.
- Cool air is brought in to the computer. Warm air is removed from the computer. Air is carried over a heat-sink to cool down a component that is more susceptible to heat.
- An external fan can be used to remove heat from a computer. There are external fans for computer towers, as well laptops. With computer towers, an external fan is latched on to the back of the computer. Laptops can rest on top of an external fan positioned on a desk, or even in a person's lap.
- Desktop computers are not the only computers that utilize fans to cool their components. Notebooks or laptop computers are highly susceptible to heat. Eventually, a laptop's hardware starts to break down. Much of this is due to moving the computer around, but there is also the issue of overheating. An external fan can resolve problems of overheating. Without an external fan, laptop computers will become hot through time and use. When the temperature gets too hot for a laptop, it simply overheats and turns off the computer. The most common external fans for laptops are placed on the surface of a desk, and the laptop is placed on top of the external fan.
- There are a number of fans, and each one works a little differently. Modern computers require an assortment of fan types. A case mount fan, for example, draws air into the casing of the fan. This type of fan does poorly if the temperature around the computer is too warm, but it gets the job done in an air-conditioned office. Case fans are as small as 80 mm (3.15 inches), and as large as 120 mm (4.72 inches). Newer graphics cards require their own fan. Chipset fans are generally positioned over the motherboard on a computer. These fans keep the circuits cool in the computer. Sometimes the chip on the motherboard requires a fan and a heat-sink. Modern graphics cards can generate more heat than the computer's central processing unit. A fan can be installed on the PCI slots to keep the graphics card cool. Video cards have been designed to work with heat-sink, so that the surface area of the video card is exposed to moving air inside of the computer. Hard disk fans are not uncommon, especially in very fast computers. Any computer running a hard drive that oscillates more than ten thousand RPM should have a hard disk fan installed on or near the hard drive.