Cooling of computers and servers

Giteqa

A cooler is two elements connected to each other, namely a fan and a radiator. There are different coolers from the cheapest, which can only cool processors with 2 cores and up to dropsy. 

Dropsy is water cooling of the processor, which is a more expensive solution, as well as more elegant and efficient in terms of CPU cooling. 

Why is cooling important?

Cooling the computer / server is a very important aspect in its work because insufficient cooling directly affects the performance of the system, as well as the service life of components. 
For example, you have an old computer that has a cooler with TDP (heat sink requirements) = 60 W. And so you bought a new processor, where the TDP is 75 with full processor performance. Due to a sufficiently large difference in the heat sink, your processor will either overheat and the system will shut down (I know from personal experience) or you will have to limit the number of working cores so that the system works at half strength, but stably. 

That is why it is important to know how to choose the right cooler, how to determine whether the cooler is suitable for the processor and whether the cooler cooling will be sufficient. There are pitfalls everywhere, and we will try to point out all the pitfalls of this topic.

How does cooling work?

Everything is quite simple.

The processor heats up and releases heat, which absorbs the radiator and accelerates the fan. If we talk about tower coolers, then copper tubes transfer heat to the radiator and there the heat is dissipated by a fan (from one to several.)

In the case of water cooling, everything works identically, except that the heat is absorbed by the pump and transferred using water pipes to coolers, where the heat is already dissipated.

What are the types of cooling for computers?

Although at the beginning of the article we briefly talked about two types of cooling, they also have their own categories. (Except dropsy)

Cooling the computer with a cooler:

It can be called the main cooling on almost all budget systems! 

  • Radiator - also some old types of computers used cooling in the form of a radiator without a fan, but these times are long over and if you try to run a processor with 4 or more cores using only a radiator without a fan, the system will stop working very quickly.
     
  • Radiator + fan - this type of cooling is used by most users. This type applies to both office and home computers, and its advantage is the ability to choose the best budget / cooling option because there are many different variations. However, this type of cooling may not be suitable for gaming computers or computers on which photo editing/processing is performed, etc.
     
  • Tower coolers are one of the best solutions for users who are trying to save money and get good CPU cooling. You can also spend a fairly large amount on this type of coolers because some of them can cope with the newest processors that will work at full capacity and use all the cores. It is these types of coolers that are popular with gamers or editors, etc.

It makes no sense to talk about water cooling because the principle of operation is identical, except that TDP will not be so important because this type of cooling will cope even with the newest processors. 

How to choose cooling for a computer?

In fact, the choice of cooling is not such a complicated process and for the right choice you need to know only a few points. 

  1. What is the TDP of your processor?
  2. Are you going to overclock the processor?
  3. For what purposes will the computer be used?

The answers to these questions will be your beacon in choosing a cooling system. And so we will analyze the answers!

First answer
If you do not know the TDP of your processor, then check it on the AMD or Intel manufacturer's website. Without this, the choice of cooling can be considered impossible!
When you have learned the TDP of the processor, you should take the cooling system with a small margin.
About 1.5 times more than the CPU. Thus, for a 75W processor, you will need a cooler with a TDP of 100-150W and in this case the CPU cooler will not overheat. However, you can take the cooler end-to-end so that there is a 75W processor and an 80W cooler, but there will be some restrictions.

Second and third answer
If you are not going to overclock the processor and use it only for light applications, for example, office work. Then a cooler will suit you, which will have a slightly larger heat sink than the processor.
However, if you are going to overclock the processor, play games or do installation, then you will need a cooler with a heat sink 1.5 or 2 times larger than the processor. An example of how to choose I indicated in the first answer. Usually, a tower cooler or water cooling is used to cool the systems that you are going to use at full capacity.

How to cool the server?

Not all people who ask this question understand how difficult everything is there. As a rule, there are instructions from manufacturers for cooling the server, which indicates the percentage of moisture that should be in the room, max temperature, etc.
If there are no instructions, then you should refer to the standards, and they are as follows:

  • The temperature is 20-25 degrees Celsius.
  • The humidity level is 40-50% 
  • At least 2 air conditioners must be installed in the room.
  • The air conditioner should not be installed over the servers (condensation may get in).
  • Place the server in the vicinity of the air conditioner.
  • You can use an exhaust fan if the air conditioners do not cope.

In principle, these are standard recommendations for cooling servers up to 10 kW. 

For servers over 10 kW, other rules and tools are already used.

Conclusion

In this article, you learned about cooling for PCs and Servers. We figured out the difference between the types of cooling for computers and talked a little about server cooling. You have also received some tips according to which it will be easier for you to choose cooling for your computer, as well as recommendations for cooling servers.

And if you don't want to worry about cooling, then I recommend to get acquainted with our prices because we have no problems with cooling!