Here are a couple of pictures of the new passive heatsink. Right now besides the pc case fans, I’ve got a desk fan pointed straight at the side of the pc blowing air through the side vent, and another fan at the front of the pc, blowing air into the intake holes. It’s been pretty warm the past couple of days and this room gets very stuffy, but the computer’s been running well with no stability problems so far, so fingers crossed I won’t need to rig up anymore internal fans.
I'm TFP, a food blogger from Perth, Western Australia.
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Woah. 2 case fans, 1 PC fan (that’s a given), one massive heatsink for the chipset *and* 2 outside fans blowing at the case.
Heh. Woah indeed. But you are right – it’s been hot and if your room is not airy enough it just makes it worse.
Haha, actually it’s 3 case fans (one intake in the front that you can’t see, 2 exhaust in the back). The cpu fan is a Thermaltake Big Typhoon, and yep, the new chipset heatsink is quite big (only 54g though). Now I have to watch that curious Pixel doesn’t get her whiskers caught in the desk fan.
I wish I understood most of this, having only the vaguest notions about it. So, what are the reasons for all the fans? The “new chipset”? What is that and how is it different from the average PC? I really want to know, btw, not just trying to be a wiseass. \;+)
B’gina,
I’ll try to give you the gist hopefully without getting too detailed/technical.
“Chipset” refers to the group of integrated circuits on the computer’s motherboard. All computers will have a motherboard/chipset. When the computer is running the chipset gets hot and needs some sort of cooling. Originally, my motherboard’s chipset came with a small fan installed over the top of it to keep the chipset cool, but the fan itself was a piece of crap that failed. The motherboard company’s replacement fan was also a piece of crap and it also failed. So it’s not a “new chipset” I am referring to in this post, but the new passive cooler for the chipset. ‘Active’ cooling is something that involves moving parts or power, such as a fan; ‘passive’ cooling requires no power – in my case, my new passive cooler is a heatsink that is made of aluminium that absorbs the heat produced from the chipset. The old crappy fans were ‘active’ cooling. The big orange fan you see in the photo is the active cooler for my CPU (central processing unit).
It is quite common for pcs to have case fans these days, as computer parts are running faster and harder and hotter, and one way to keep things running at reasonable temperatures is to maintain adequate airflow through your computer case. I bought this particular pc case because it came with the three fans installed (1 x front intake fan to draw air into the computer, and 2 x rear exhaust fans that blow hot air out).
The passive cooler for the chipset produces no noise whatsoever, whereas the old fan(s) were damned noisy, so that’s a benefit.
Not sure how my pc compares to the average. I thought it might be helpful to some people to see the photos of the new passive cooler installed, as lots of people with the same motherboard have had to/will have to replace their crappy failing chipset fans too. :)