The system called Orgasmatron is quite original. The builder aodqw97 created it completely from scratch back in 2005.


On the front panel of the computer, you can see the original reset and power buttons, and to the right of them a special toggle switch turns on / off the cooling of hard drives. The case itself is made of acrylic, and the tubes are sensitive to ultraviolet light, they glow in the dark with appropriate lighting.

Sledgehammer by TommyTech

This system water-cooled is called the Sledgehammer, and it contains a rather original cylindrical tank mounted on the side of the 4U rack-mount case. The tank is not filled to the maximum, therefore, during the operation of the system, beautiful effect bubbles. On the front panel there is a panel for adjusting the fan speed and pump speed. This system cools the CPU, GPU and chipset. Quite enough, in my opinion.

Fancy heat exchanger by syman_leeds_uk

Before us is a water cooling system with a radiator, which can be called unusual. Attached to the wall is a round sheet of metal with copper tubes - all this was done by hand. The very large area of ​​the metal allows it to dissipate heat into the air without the aid of fans, which reduces the overall noise level.
And the large cylinder in the background that looks like a water heater is actually a computer. A good way to save on heating in winter. The only question is - what to do in the summer?

Green Cooling by PCGH Extreme

The system in the photo uses a cylindrical inner tank filled with a green liquid. Thanks to the bubbles, a jelly-like effect is created. In any case, the system looks very stylish.

One hundred pipes by silviarb20det

The photo shows the water-cooled system of one of the modders. The number of tubes is simply amazing. When you upgrade something, it can be difficult to deal with pipes.

Huge number of fans by rubin1456

Before us, although not a water cooling system, but a rather original case, consisting of a huge number of 120 mm fans. The system is cooled not only from the back and front, but also from all sides, including the bottom!
Of course, you can't dream of an optimized airflow in such a system. Does it cool effectively? Hardly. But who cares, just another crazy modder decided to stand out from the crowd. Well, he succeeded!

Dive computer from Puget Systems

Puget Systems sells submersible computer systems both ready-made and simply “aquarium-case”. Mounted inside motherboard and all components, with the exception of hard drives, after which the case is filled with oil, which Puget puts in the package. And you get your own liquid-cooled submersible system. It remains to run the fish.

Project Monolith by rainwulf

The system shown in the photo was compiled by rainwulf from overclockers.com.au and named Project Monolith. The system is completely built from scratch: from the body to the tubes. Of all the systems we've looked at in this review, the rainwulf is the craziest. Even the power supply has water cooling! Rainwulf has fully described the entire manufacturing and assembly process, which you can read.


Look what rainwulf did to the graphics card. You can see the amazing attention to every detail. All this had to be carefully planned.


Unusual cooling system surprised us Apple company, releasing new model his workstation— Mac Pro. The entire body of the station is an aluminum cylinder, reminiscent of an aircraft turbine. Inside, all components are soldered around an unusual triangular-shaped heatsink.


This non-standard arrangement allowed Apple to accommodate such powerful stuffing in a small and very stylish case. What is most surprising is that the workstation's cooling system is very quiet and does not irritate the ear.

Another cooling system has been assembled for a long time, but it deserves attention. If only because its author tried very hard. It is difficult to call such a layout successful, but it works, and this is a fact.


Unusual cooling systems from enthusiasts are surprising in their complexity, given that they are all "hand made". But still, you see, it's a pity not to use such an amount of "free" heat. This issue was taken up by engineers from IBM. Their Sequoia supercomputer, deployed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States, generates a lot of heat. decided to use this heat and installed a very sophisticated cooling system. This made it possible to heat the entire building of the institute in the cold season.


And finally, a little humor.

A huge number of myths associated with assembling and configuring a PC roam various computer forums and shops. Some of them were really true about 10 years ago, and some were already wrong from the very beginning. And today we will talk about the myths that are associated with the cooling systems of both the system unit as a whole and the video card and processor separately.

Myth one: you need to throw out the complete thermal paste for the cooler and take a normal one

Yes and no. It all depends on the class of the cooler: for example, if you take a simple cooler that consists of an ordinary aluminum radiator and a small fan, then you will be supplied with a simple KPT-8 thermal paste. And you don’t need more: all the same, such a cooler will cool a maximum of Core i3, and with its heat dissipation (about 30 W), the heat-conducting properties of thermal paste do not play a special role, and replacing the bundled thermal paste with something expensive (even liquid metal) will reduce you temperature from the strength of a couple of degrees - that is, the game is not worth the candle. On the other hand, if you take an expensive cooler from the same Noctua, with 5 copper heat pipes and nickel plating, then you will be supplied with a fairly good thermal paste, at least Arctic MX-2 level. So here, too, changing the thermal paste to a better one (or to the same liquid metal) will again lower the temperature slightly. But, on the other hand, such coolers are usually taken for overclocking, so a couple of degrees can be critical. But in general, the fact that the bundled thermal paste is bad is a myth: it is good for its class of cooler.

Myth two: of the two fans, the one with the higher speed is more efficient

Quite a funny myth, which is fundamentally not true. The most important characteristic of a fan is by no means its maximum number of revolutions per minute, and not the shape of the blades, and not even the size - but the air flow that it creates: that is, the volume of air that such a fan pumps per unit time. And the higher this figure, the more efficient the fan will work. And so the fan speed doesn't matter here: a 120mm fan at 1000rpm often creates more airflow than an 80mm fan at 1500rpm. So this is an unequivocal myth: out of two fans, the one with more airflow is more efficient.

Myth three: direct contact of copper heat pipes with the processor cover is better than contact of the cover with the aluminum base of the cooler

Everything is not so simple here. First, if we see such a cooler base, then we should not take it:

Why? The answer is simple - heat removal will be inefficient, since there are gaps between the heat pipes, and as a result, the contact area will be significantly less than the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe processor cover. Considering that this is a tower cooler and it is usually used to cool "hot" Core i7 or Ryzen - we will get higher temperatures than when the cooler base is in full contact with the processor cover (for skeptics - even ASUS when switching from the 900th series Nvidia graphics cards by the 1000th refused direct contact of the heat pipes with the GPU chip for this very reason).

That is, an aluminum base with heat pipes passing through it is better? The structure looks like this:


Yes and no. The problem is that the point of contact between two metals - in this case copper and aluminum - has some thermal resistance. And in order to reduce this resistance, the contact of the two metals must be the most dense ( copper tubes must be completely surrounded by aluminum, and even better - soldered into it). In this case, the contact of the processor cover with the base will be the most complete, and the heat transfer at the junction of two metals will be good.

Myth four - polishing the base of the cooler and processor will improve heat transfer between them

In theory, everything is correct: the smoother the surfaces, the fewer gaps in them, the tighter the contact will be and, therefore, the better the heat transfer will be. But the bottom line is that you definitely won’t make the surface evener at home, moreover - most likely due to the fact that in some places you stomp more, and in some places less - you will only worsen the contact (“by eye” it’s not good to scuff). Well, modern coolers are already polished so that even with a special grinder you are unlikely to make the polishing better. So this myth can be attributed to the ancient ones - yes, indeed, at the dawn of the appearance of coolers, their polishing left much to be desired. But now it's not.

Myth five - since liquid metal is similar in properties to solder, it must be used wherever possible and impossible

Yes, indeed, the heat-conducting properties of liquid metal can be an order of magnitude better than those of thermal pastes, and are indeed similar in efficiency to solder. But it has several important features: firstly, it conducts current. So when smearing it (although rather rubbing it in), make sure that it does not get on the board components. Watch this especially carefully when you change the thermal paste to the FM on the GPU chip - there are often many small components next to it, the shorting of which can lead to the failure of the video card:


So when using the FM, insulate all nearby components of the board with the same varnish.

And the second feature of liquid metal is that it contains gallium. The metal is remarkable in that it destroys aluminum, so if you have a cooler substrate like this, you can’t use it. There are no problems with copper, nickel, silver and other metals. Well, its last feature - it makes no sense to use it with an air cooler: practice shows that replacing good thermal paste with ZhM reduces the temperature by only 2-3 degrees. But with water cooling, you can achieve a more significant difference.

Myth #6: Water cooling is always better than air cooling.

In theory - yes: water effectively removes heat from the processor to the radiator, the area of ​​\u200b\u200bwhich is often larger in good drops than in coolers. Yes, and dropsy fans are usually still two, not one, so the air flow also turns out to be large. But with modern processors from Intel, where under the “thermal seal” cover, you can observe interesting effect: that with a cooler they often overheat, that with expensive dropsy. The problem here is that bad factory thermal paste under the processor cover can only drain 130-140 watts from its crystal. Considering that the heat dissipation of top 10-core processors often approaches 200 W (especially during overclocking), we get overheating, which does not depend on the cooling system, since the problem with heat dissipation is even before it, under the processor cover. So the water cooling system will not always be better than the air one, and therefore you should not be surprised why the Core i9 heats up to 100 degrees under load with the top-end dropsy.

Myth seven: the more case coolers, the better

A fairly popular misconception: the Internet is full of pictures where 3-4 coolers with parrot lights are attached to the case. In practice, this will not only not help, but will interfere. The problem is that any case is a closed rather narrow space, and any cooler will create a certain air flow in it. And when there are a lot of coolers, and they still blow in different sides- wind hell will be created inside the case, and as a result, it may turn out that warm air will not be properly removed. Therefore, it is best to attach only two coolers, but correctly: on the front panel they work for blowing in, on the back - for blowing out. Then one clear air flow will be created inside the case:


Moreover, it should be taken into account that the air flow of the cooler for blowing in must be equal to the air flow of the cooler for blowing out. The question arises - why is the cooler on the front panel for blowing, and on the back - for blowing, and not vice versa? The answer is banal - the back of the system unit is usually more dusty than the front. So, the blowing cooler on the back cover would simply draw dust into the case, which is not good (yes, the reason is only in this, and not in the fact that the processor fan spins in this direction).

Myth eight - under load it is better to set the maximum fan speed for better cooling

In theory, again, everything is correct: more speed > more airflow > more efficient heat removal from the radiator > lower processor temperature. However, in practice, often the difference in processor temperature at maximum fan speed, and at half of the maximum speed is only a few degrees. Why is this happening? The answer is simple: air is not the best coolant, and therefore the higher the air flow, the less the increase. So it's often possible to set the fan speed to 50-70% of maximum and get a good balance of silence and temperature.

As you can see, there are a lot of myths, so be careful when assembling a PC: it happens that a seemingly logical conclusion can be fundamentally wrong.

In this article I will try to talk about my attempt to make a water cooling system for the processor at home. At the same time, I will describe the main points and technical subtleties using the example of my own experience. If you are interested in a detailed illustrated manual for the manufacture, assembly and installation of such a system, then welcome under cat.

Traffic, lots of pictures! Video of the manufacturing process at the very bottom.

The thought of creating more efficient cooling home computer I was born in the process of finding a way to improve the performance of my computer by "overclocking" the processor. An overclocked processor consumes one and a half times more power and heats up accordingly. The main limiter to buying a ready-made one is the price, buying a ready-made water cooling system in a store is unlikely to cost less than a hundred dollars. Yes, in reviews. budget systems liquid cooling is not particularly praised. So it was decided to make the simplest CBO independently and at minimal cost.

Theory and Assembly

Main details

• Water block (or heat exchanger)
• Centrifugal water pump (pump) with a capacity of 600 liters / h.
• Cooling radiator (automotive)
• Expansion tank for coolant (water)
• Hoses 10-12 mm;
• Fans with a diameter of 120mm (4 pieces)
• Power supply for fans
• Expendable materials

water block

The main task of the water block is to quickly take heat from the processor and transfer it to the coolant. For these purposes, copper is most suitable. It is possible to manufacture a heat exchanger from aluminum, but its thermal conductivity (230 W / (m * K)) is half that of copper (395.4 W / (m * K)). Also important is the device of the water block (or heat exchanger). The heat exchanger device is one or more continuous channels passing through the entire internal volume of the water block. It is important to maximize the surface of contact with water and avoid water stagnation. To increase the surface, frequent cuts are usually used on the walls of the water block or small needle radiators are installed.

I didn't try to make anything complicated, so I started making a simple water container with two holes for pipes. A brass pipe connector was taken as the basis, and a copper plate 2 mm thick became the base. From above, two copper tubes of the hose diameter are inserted into the same plate. Everything is soldered with tin-lead solder. Making the waterblock bigger, at first I did not think about its weight. Assembled with hoses and water, more than 300 grams will hang on the motherboard, and additional hose mounts had to be used to make it easier.

• Material: copper, brass
• Fitting diameter: 10 mm
• Soldering: Tin-lead solder
• Mounting method: screws to the store cooler mount, hoses are attached with clamps
• Price: about 100 rubles

Sawing and soldering

water pump

Pumps are external or submersible. The first only passes it through itself, and the second pushes it out, being immersed in it. Submersible is used here, it is placed in a container with water. It was not possible to find an external one, I looked in pet stores, and there only submersible aquarium pumps. Power from 200 to 1400 liters per hour price from 500 to 2000 rubles. Powered by a wall outlet, power from 4 to 20 watts. On a hard surface, the pump makes a lot of noise, and on foam rubber, the noise is negligible. A jar containing a pump was used as a water reservoir. To attach the silicone hoses, steel clamps with screws were used. An odorless lubricant can be used to make hoses easy to put on and take off.

• The maximum productivity - 650 l/h.
• Water lifting height - 80 cm
• Voltage - 220V
• Power - 6 W
• Price - 580 rubles

Radiator

How high quality the radiator will be, will largely determine the efficiency of the entire water cooling system. Here an automobile radiator of a heating system (stove) from nine was used, an old one was bought at a flea market for 100 rubles. Unfortunately, the interval between the plates in it turned out to be less than a millimeter, so I had to manually move apart and compress the plates in several pieces so that weak Chinese fans could blow through it.

• Tube material: copper
• Fin material: aluminum
• Size: 35x20x5 cm
• Fitting diameter: 14 mm
• Price: 100 rubles

blowing

The radiator is blown by two pairs of 12 cm fans in front and behind. It was not possible to power 4 fans from the system unit during the test, so I had to assemble a simple 12-volt power supply. The fans were connected in parallel, and connected with respect to polarity. This is important, otherwise the fan can be damaged with a high probability. The cooler has 3 wires: black (ground), red (+12V) and yellow (speed value).

• Material: Chinese plastic
• Diameter: 12 cm
• Voltage: 12V
• Current: 0.15A
• Price: 80*4 rubles

Note to the owner

I did not set the goal of reducing noise because of the cost of the fans. So the fan for 100 rubles is made of black plastic and consumes 150 milliamps of current. These are the ones I used to blow the radiator, it blows weakly, but it's cheap. Already for 200-300 rubles you can find much more powerful and beautiful models with a consumption of 300-600 milliamps, but at maximum speed they are noisy. This is solved by silicone gaskets and anti-vibration mounts, but for me the minimum cost was decisive.

Power Supply

If there is no ready-made one at hand, you can assemble the simplest of improvised materials and a microcircuit, which costs less than 100 rubles. For 4 fans, a current of 0.6 A is required and a little in reserve. The microcircuit gives approximately 1 ampere at a voltage of 9 to 15 volts, depending on the model. You can use any model by setting 12 volts with a variable resistor.

• Tools and soldering iron
• Radio components
• Chip
• Wires and insulation
• Price: 100 rubles

Installation and verification

Hardware

• CPU: Intel Core i7 960 3.2 GHz / 4.3 GHz
• Motherboard: ASUS Rampage 3 formula
• Power supply: OCZ ZX1250W
• Thermal Grease: AL-SIL 3

Software

• Windows 7 x64 SP1
• Prime 95
• RealTemp 3.69
• cpu-z 1.58

I didn’t have to test for a particularly long time, because. the results did not even come close to the capabilities of an air cooler. The CBO radiator has so far been blown by only two Chinese fans out of 4 possible and have not yet been moved apart wider than the plates for better blowing. So in the energy saving mode and zero load, the temperature of the processor in the air is about 42 degrees, and on a self-made CBO it is 57 degrees. Running the prime95 test on 4 threads (50% load) warms up to 65 degrees in air and to 100 degrees in 30 seconds in CBO. When overclocked, the results are even worse.

An attempt was made to make a new water block with a thinner (0.5 mm) copper base plate and almost three times more capacious inside, though from the same materials (copper + brass). The plates have been moved apart in the radiator for better ventilation and two more fans have been added, now there are 4 of them. This time, in the power saving mode and zero load, the temperature of the processor in the air is about 42 degrees, and on a self-made CBO, about 55 degrees. Running the prime95 test on 4 threads (50% load) warms up to 65 degrees in air and up to 83 degrees in CBO. But at the same time, the water in the circuit starts to heat up quite quickly and after 5-7 minutes the temperature of the processor reaches 96 degrees. These are the readings without overclocking.

Of course, it was interesting to collect CBO, but to use it for cooling modern processor failed. In older computers, a regular cooler does an excellent job. Maybe I picked up poor-quality materials or made the water block incorrectly, but it’s not possible for me to assemble a CBO for less than 1000 rubles at home. After reading reviews of budget ready-made CBOs available in stores, I did not hope that my homemade product would be better than a good air cooler. For myself, I concluded that it is not worth saving in the future on components for SVO. When I decide to buy a CBO for overclocking, I will definitely assemble it myself from individual parts.

Video

The most energy-consuming in a computer is the processor and the removal of the generated thermal energy is urgent task especially when the temperature environment high. Not only the stability and durability of its operation depend on the processor heating temperature, but also the speed, which processor manufacturers usually keep silent about.

In the vast majority of computers, the processor cooling system is designed to ignore the elementary laws of physics. The system cooler operates in short circuit mode, since there is no screen to prevent the cooler from sucking hot air coming out of the processor heatsink. As a result, the efficiency of the processor cooling system does not exceed 50%. In addition, cooling is provided by air heated by other components and assemblies placed in system block.

Sometimes an additional cooler is installed in the system unit on the back wall, but this is not the best solution. An additional cooler works to push air out of the system unit into the environment, just like the power supply cooler. As a result, the efficiency of both coolers is much lower if they worked separately - one sucks air into the system unit, and the other pushes it out. As a result, additional electricity is consumed and, what is most unpleasant, additional acoustic noise appears.

The proposed design of the processor cooling system is free from the above disadvantages, is easy to implement and provides high cooling efficiency for the processor and, as a result, other components of the motherboard. The idea is not new and simple, the air for cooling the processor heatsink is taken from outside the system unit, that is, from the room.

I decided to improve the cooling system of the processor of my computer, when a construct from the cooling system of a branded, obsolete system unit caught my eye.

It remains to fix this part in the system unit and connect it to the processor cooler. Since the length of the pipe was insufficient, it was necessary to increase it with the help of a polyethylene tape twisted into a tube. The diameter of the tube is chosen taking into account a tight fit on the CPU cooler case. To prevent the tape from developing, it is fixed with a metal bracket using a stapler.

The system is fixed with self-tapping screws to the rear wall of the system unit using self-made two corners. Precise positioning relative to the center of the cooler is achieved due to the lengths of the sides of the corners.

Such a simple design made it possible to practically exclude the flow of hot air from the system unit into the processor cooling system.

There was already a hole in the cover of my system unit, which simplified the work. But making a hole yourself is not difficult, you need to project the center point of the cooler onto the side cover, draw a circle with a compass, slightly smaller than the diameter of the tube. Drill with a drill with a diameter of 2.5-3 mm with a step of 3.5 mm along the entire length of the hole circumference line. Drilling points must be pre-marked with a core. Then drill the drilled holes with a 4 mm drill bit. Finish the edges of the resulting hole with a round file. It remains only to install a decorative grille, although it is not required.

A plastic drink bottle can be successfully used as an air duct. If there is no suitable diameter, then you can take a larger one, cut along and sew with threads. High tightness is not required here. You can also fix the tube with small screws directly to the cooler body. The main thing is to provide air supply to the processor cooling system from the outside.

Temperature measurements showed the high efficiency of the cooling system for the Pentium 2.8 GHz processor. At 10% processor load, at an ambient temperature of 20°C, the processor temperature did not exceed 30°C, the heatsink was cold to the touch. At the same time, the cooler effectively cooled the radiator at the lowest speeds.

"Advanced" cooling

By strong acceleration.

*** illustration black_mamba

Cold and silent:

Air is everything!

But, if you do not have a top-end gaming system and you are not an avid overclocker, then you probably won’t need a water and especially liquid nitrogen or any other heaped system. In order to lower the temperature by a few degrees (up to ten), which is required in the hottest summer, it will be enough to upgrade the conventional air cooling (and also do a couple of simple steps; see the box “10 Commandments for Proper Cooling”). To do this, it will be enough to add a few new coolers or upgrade existing ones. In this context, it is important to remember that for a correct, productive air cooling location plays a big role

The upcoming summer, according to weather forecasts, promises to be quite hot. And you readily believe this, remembering the unprecedented heat already in mid-April. And this means that our computers, or rather their components, will again experience an additional load in the form of extra degrees. Of course, if there is air conditioning at home, then you don’t have to worry about this, but if it is not there, there is a real threat of overheating of the components and their failure. How to help our electronic friends in the summer heat? Simple, inexpensive and advanced methods will be discussed further.

"Advanced" cooling

There are many ways to cool down your PC. For example, using radiator, liquid, freon, liquid nitrogen and liquid helium cooling, as well as cooling based on liquid metal. Such systems are used mainly in overclocking, and there is an urgent need for them ordinary users Dont Have. Actually, it's like comparing the needs of a race car driver and an ordinary (even advanced) motorist. The difference between these very technical needs is obvious.

Water cooling systems are well-deservedly popular with overclockers. The principle of their operation is based on the circulation of the coolant. Computer components that need to be cooled heat the water, and the water, in turn, is cooled in the heatsink. In this case, the radiator can be located outside the case and even be passive. (i.e. run without a heat sink fan).

It should be said separately about cryogenic cooling systems for PCs, which operate on the principle of changing the phase state of a substance, like a refrigerator and an air conditioner. The disadvantage of cryogenic systems is high noise, large mass and cost, and complexity in installation. But only using such systems, it is possible to achieve a negative temperature of the processor or video card, and, accordingly, the highest performance. by strong acceleration.

Cold and silent: This is how a PC equipped with a water cooling system looks pretty nice. The big advantage of such a system is that the computer works almost silently.

It is worth adding a few words about the benefits of complex cooling systems. They are silent, and at any time you can turn on the possibility of forced enhanced cooling in the PC. Of the minuses for the average user, it is worth noting the rather high cost (from $ 100) of the finished system, the requirement for great accuracy when using it, and the need for additional accessories when installing. In any case, experiments with these types of cooling should only be carried out when necessary - if your PC has really huge power.

Air is everything!

But, if you do not have a top-end gaming system and you are not an avid overclocker, then you probably won’t need a water and especially liquid nitrogen or any other heaped system. In order to lower the temperature by a few degrees (up to ten), which is required in the hottest summer, it will be enough to upgrade the conventional air cooling (and also do a couple of simple steps; see the box “10 Commandments for Proper Cooling”). To do this, it will be enough to add a few new coolers or upgrade existing ones. In this context, it is important to remember that for proper, productive air cooling, the location of the fans plays a big role. Actually, maximum effect is achieved not when as much cold air as possible is blown into the case, but when effective air flows are organized, with competent cold air inlet inside and warm air out (if all fans work for blowing, the air inside will simply heat up quickly, without being able to normal to go outside the body).

The possibilities of installing additional fans depend not only on your wallet, but also on the case. In this regard, you will not envy the owners of the old or the cheapest cases. Often they do not have additional places for installing coolers, and the hot air outlet in them is implemented very simply: the flows are removed using a fan located on the power supply and the back of the computer. This creates a serious load not only on it, but also on the processor, which in most motherboards is installed just at the top. So if you buy new computer, do not regret the extra 300-400 UAH per case. Yes, and the old PC can be transferred to a new "home" - this is not difficult to do.

In most modern cases, there are several places for installing coolers. If you have carefully read case tests in several previous issues of our magazine, you have probably noticed that technical specifications we indicated the number of not only pre-installed coolers, but also seats for additional ones. Let's take a look at which fans are best placed where (for simplicity, we will assume that our virtual case has seats on all panels).

Advanced cooler models have a number of advantages over conventional fans. For example, this pretty green "baby" from ThermalTake has a heatsink far enough away from the processor thanks to six copper heat pipes. Two fans are used to cool the radiator. One pumps air, the other effectively removes it.

For blowing:

Coolers working on blowing must be placed on the front panel. There they will effectively cool hard drives and force air inside - such a gate for cold air. If you have one HDD, you can completely get by with such blowing fans, but it’s better (and if hard drives several, it is highly recommended) to put the fans on side panels(either on one of them, often there are such places on the left, less often on both, well, and quite an exceptional case, when only on the right). As a result, air will be injected directly into the motherboard area (that is, directly onto the processor and video card, which will be a significant help for their regular systems cooling) and refresh the air flow from the front panel, heated by hard drives. If possible, you can put a fan on the bottom panel (bottom) - cold air from the bottom will also effectively supplement the air flows and better displace the heated air to the top.

For blowout:

Coolers that bring warm air out of the case are placed on the back and, if possible, on top panel. Thus, we get a constant blowing air flow, which effectively cools all PC components and instantly, when heated, goes outside the case, thus freeing up space for cold air.

How not to:

Set the fan on the rear panel to blow. Because of this, a closed air ring is created between the power supply and the cooler, and part of the hot air from the power supply is immediately sucked back inside.

Install the front fan. There are several options here, depending on the location of other fans, but in any case, given that the cooler on the power supply also works for blowing, there will be no effective air flow, and hard drives will carry an additional thermal load.

Perhaps the most clinical case is when all the fans work to blow out, thus creating a rarefied atmosphere and low pressure inside the case. Yes, we know that a rarefied medium heats up worse, but with such a construction of the cooling system, there will be almost no air movement inside, and the one that is will still heat up significantly over time. Such a scheme, by the way, is the most difficult for PC components, which have nowhere to throw away the accumulated heat.

The cooling method indicated in the diagram is one of the most effective. Depending on the needs, blowing coolers can be delivered to the bottom and side panels

Silence is the key to health

Some users are deterred from installing additional fans by the fact that after that the level of noise emitted by the system will rise. But in fact, the number of additional decibels can be minimized. Here are some recommendations:

1. If the slot allows, buy a larger fan. Contrary to popular belief, with the same volume of air blown in, it will make less noise than a small one, due to the fact that for this it will need to make fewer revolutions. More blades will also contribute to less noise.

2. Some cases have a manual fan speed control feature. If you don't have one, you can use special programs(they have the possibility automatic adjustment depending on the temperature of the components). In any case, the maximum cooler speed is not always needed, and at minimum speed, the system will work very quietly even with a lot of coolers.

3. If the motherboard has four-pin connectors for powering coolers, then buy four-wire fans. They are very quiet, and they have a fairly wide range of automatic speed control.

4. Pay attention to the bearing type. For example, hydrodynamic bearings ensure very quiet operation of the fan.

The Zalman ZM-F2 FDB cooler uses hydrodynamic bearing, which significantly reduces vibration and, as a result, the noise level

The younger "brothers"

With laptop cooling, the story is different and much more complicated. Although in terms of heat dissipation, they are much inferior to desktop PCs, and the manufacturer himself already lays the optimal design of heat sinks in them, changing anything in the laptop cooling system (if its capabilities are not enough) is very problematic. So to say, there is nowhere to screw an additional cooler. Therefore, there are other options. By the way, the first thing worth mentioning is the same notorious installation of a program for checking temperatures. You can find out the normal temperature for specific laptop components on the manufacturer's website. Although for laptops there are still approximate norms. So for the processor normal temperature can be considered 75-80 ° C under load (if above 90 - definitely overheating); for video card - 70–90 °C; for a hard drive - 50–55 (if it is above 60, then it is worth copying important data from the hard drive. There is a risk of losing it); and the chipset will easily withstand heating up to 90°C

The golden rule of a laptop user should be to check that the ventilation holes are not blocked. In no case should the computer be placed on a bed or other upholstered furniture, blankets, etc., as the heroes of many films do. That's why they are movies, and the laptop is overheated. Usually nothing terrible happens, but in some cases, the video card, the north and south bridges may fail. The hard drive may also fail, which will lead to loss of information. This is because the chips have a maximum temperature, after which the destruction of their structure begins. Usually it is 110–125 °C. At this temperature, both the chip itself and the contact of the chip with the board are damaged. As a result, the laptop may either not turn on at all due to problems with the chipset, or display various artifacts on the screen. But the processor fails very rarely.

If you really want to work on the bed, but there is no way to spend money on a cooler-stand, you can use an ordinary plastic / metal / wooden food tray or plywood board to fit the device to work in a chair or bed. Naturally, in this case, it should be ensured that not a single ventilation hole is blocked.

When using a laptop at a table, there is one trick - put something under its back end. In most cases, the air that cools the laptop components is sucked in through holes and slots in the bottom of the laptop. Part of the air is also sucked in from the keyboard side. When lifting the back end of the laptop, the gap between the bottom and the table increases. As a result, air circulation improves. In other words, the air that is driven through the radiator of the cooling system becomes colder. Also, by reducing the resistance of this air, more is sucked in. As a result, the temperature may drop by 5–10 °C. Under the back end, you can put anything you like, from books to stationery rubber bands. Although there are special gadgets for this, for example, the Belkin Laptop CoolStrip.

Finally, laptop cooler pads are also a good option for cooling. But again, not all are effective enough. For example, small folding fans that are placed under a laptop usually just disperse the air around them and raise dust. It is optimal to take the stand not curved inward, but with a straight surface, perhaps slightly inclined for greater convenience, so that the laptop screen is slightly higher. Most of these models are CoolerMaster NotePal, Zalman, Vantec LapCool and many others. By the way, with additional cooling the maximum temperature of the laptop is 4-5 °C less than without it. And cooling to a normal level is much faster: returning to the “background” temperature value takes only about two minutes, and without it - almost 15.

10 commandments of proper cooling

Like the mathematician and philosopher Rene Descartes, let's go from simple to complex. Repeating common truths about PC cooling sometimes helps to understand what has been missed. So…

1. Better lower the system unit lower (ideally - on a special stand on wheels). From the school physics course, everyone probably remembers that hot air usually rises, and cold air goes down.

2. Explore the surroundings of the system unit - are there curtains, napkins, armchairs and other household utensils nearby that can interfere with the full air exchange of the computer.

3. Clean the inside of your PC regularly with a vacuum cleaner. Dust and animal hair can significantly clog coolers, especially on the power supply.

4. Set the coolers on the front panel to blow in, on the back - to blow out.

5. Make sure that in this case there are no large gaps in the system unit (for example, holes from the removed panel for the drive).

6. The wires inside should also not interfere with air circulation, so they should be carefully laid and reinforced with ordinary clamps.

7. Check the presence of thermal paste and update it if necessary (a 50-gram tube costs a penny, but it will last for 40-50 cleanings). To do this, you need to remove the coolers from the processor and video card and gently wipe with alcohol from the remnants of the old thermal paste, then just as scrupulously lubricate the contact surfaces of the processor and radiator and put everything in place.

8. If there are several hard drives in the case, they should be placed in slots away from each other.

9. If possible, do not connect power-consuming devices such as USB refrigerators, fans, etc. to the PC (especially laptops).

10. If necessary, change the standard coolers to more advanced ones or deliver new ones if there are appropriate slots on the case.

The above tricks for PCs - cleaning dust and updating thermal paste - are also good for laptops. Although, of course, you should disassemble them yourself only under the following conditions: a) the warranty period has expired and the seals can be broken; b) you are sure that you will assemble the laptop back (everything is much easier with a PC in terms of assembly). If the first condition is not met, but you suspect that your portable "friend" is clogged, it is better to contact service center. Replacing thermal paste requires experience and knowledge, and self-cleaning will void the warranty.

Laying wires inside a PC is a matter of five minutes, but the efficiency will be obvious