Passive Coolers!

[phantom555]

As i live in india its summer temperature makes the working of pc inoperable. I read about passive coolers which are installed in the motherboard. But i didn't found any provisions for attaching passive coolers which are used for better heat dissipation. There is something like the passive cooler which comes with major brand motherboards like gigabyte and asus written over it. It gets heated when the processor gets heated!
So as the normal pc cabinet comes with two major cooling fans. One is at the back for vent and the other over the cpu. I installed a program software which detected through thermal sensors the temperature of various peripherals in the pc. Like it even calculated the fans speed! So the fan1 indicated temperatures of the cpu - 36C to 41C.
Fan2 back vent indicated the overall temperature in the pc cabinet- 40C to 50C
Fan3 perhaps indicated the power suppy temp.- -2C
and Fan4 of the Hardrive- 38C to 47C
So i checked in info about cooling at various pc websites. And some said liquid cooling only cools down CPU temperatures while air-pipes, passive coolers only minimized the CPU temperatures!
Then there are pc cabinets like coolermaster which provides two additional fans... one at the top and the other a larger fan at the side for better passive cooling!
But it seems foolish that infact the computer industries doesn't innovate anything better for cooling overall motherboard for better functioning!

 

[patonb]

A passive cooler is a heatsink that has no direct cooling fans or fluid going to it. Active has a source that moves a fluid over the heated area, cooling better.

A passive coolers uses the surrounding cool air and case airflow to cool the cpu... or any chip on the mobo. I have an Asus mobo with passive chipset cooling, while my xfx 680i has active North bridge cooling.

Now youj mentioned the case as only 2 fans... My last few cases have had 3 or more. Most good air cases suck air into the front, and exhaust out the back and top. This moves air over majolr parts and chips and onto the cpu heat sink then out of the case.

Now different fluids, Air, water, Dry Ice and Liq Nitrogen all cool different amounts. Its basically how cold and how much heat the fluid can absorb.

Air coolers require cool air to get to the heatsink, so as the air moves over the hot mobo stuff, it has less ability to suck up more heat, thusit won't cool as well.

Water only cools parts itr touches, and works just like your cars radiator. As the water can absorb more heat, the warm air from the case doesn't change the waters cooling ability much. Plus the heat is usually expelled right out of the case.

If you run a computer out of a case, it will run real cool, but sticking it in a box, really changes things. Its the case makers who need to get better, as intel has drastically cooled off their chips, and cooling companies have really steped up their products too.

 

[Peter.Cort]

To the op, the technology is becoming much cooler. Just look at mobile processors today bs even a couple of years ago. The way CPUs are developed is basically saying we have a designated size for the CPU, now how can we get more power out of it. What they do is make transistors and the physical bits smaller and with smaller surface area on the parts they will give off less heat but by packing more and more into the CPU you lose the heat loss but gain speed. Reverse theory applies in mobile or heat sensitive components. To get less heat you need less transistors and since they are each smaller you can fit less in the CPU to achieve the desired amount of power. And that smaller fabricating technology works in the north bridge and southbridge. Also keep in mind that in most cases active cooling on the mobo is enough and in extreme cases of prolonged server running rooms are ac'd and even water cooled. When people do dry ice or liquid nitrogen the mono components are generally left passively cooled

To Paton a pc in a case with adequate air flow will be cooler than an out of case setup because the faster you move air the faster and more efficiently the CPU heatsink will be able to dissipates heat

 

[phantom555]

I checked in with another software program which computed specific temperatures of the CPU and it said 130 degree celsius. How can a processor chip function under such high temperatures!???
Normally the pc chip has a processor fan installed over a perhaps its a bakelite finned structure which is connected through sprockets to the base of the processor socket. How would the heat dessipated in only one direction upwards and the fan connected above the bakelite base assists in making airflow so as to cool the surface area of the finned structure!!!

 

[patonb]

The fans attachec to a mount, which is mounted to a metal heatsink.