| When I first got my hands on this motherboard, all it had was a heatsink on the processor and no fan. Heatsinks work on the principal that you can transfer heat off an object by touching it to a cooler object, they also work on the principle that air flowing over the surface area will lose more heat if the surface area is increased. |
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| The area circled in red is the heatsink. With no fan on, it depends on the surrounding air around it to cool it down, this is referred to as "passive cooling", by adding the fan to blow cool air on it (or reversed to pull hot air away from it) you get "active cooling". Active cooling drops the temp significantly. |
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The above picture shows cool air being brought in from the sides and
running past the heatsink where the heat from the processor is transferred
to the heatsink, where the heat from the heatsink is transferred to the
cool air flowing past it, this air is pulled along by the fan and sent
away. You can easily do the opposite of this by flipping over the fan (or
reversing the wires, which I don't personally recommend) to push cold air
onto the heatsink to collect the heat off the fins, and push the hot air
away.
Next: Conclusion and Overall Cooling |
