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CPU Coolers

Does your PC start becoming "slower" as the days get hotter? Do you belong to the tribe that likes to open the PC case and regularly clean the inside of the computer? For that matter, have you ever touched the top of your PCU?

Today's computer’s CPU chips run hot enough to burn off your finger prints. That's why most of them have a heat-sink stuck on heat-conducting paste. And if you use your PC in a non-air conditioned environment (see below for why air coolers don't count), do consider getting a CPU cooling fan. And make sure your computer case is well ventilated.

Heat is a CPU chip's worst enemy. The cooler the chip the more stable it is and the longer it lasts. Abnormally high temperatures make the CPU behave erratically or lock up until it cools down; if you're lucky. But extreme temperatures permanently damage or destroy a CPU.

Personal computer thermal management used to be a fairly forgiving science. Early PCs had one fan inside the power supply that handled cooling for the entire system. But as CPUs advanced, they pumped more energy through smaller wire traces at ever-increasing clock frequencies. As a result, today without a properly-sized and functioning heat sinks or fans, most CPUs literally cook themselves to death!

Laptops too can run really hot in spite of lower-voltage components and aggressive power-saving. A common trick used to dissipate heat is by using the laptop’s body as a massive heat sink. And you are the first to know when your thighs start feeling over-cooked. That's when it time to stop working and shut down the system so it cools off.

While there are exceptions, most PCs sold in India are anything but well-ventilated. They usually have one fan to keep the power supply cooled and the other to cool the CPU. There are no after-market products to keep the PC insides cool; except by taking off the cover. This we don't recommend as it increases dust entering the PC. Instead remove some of the slot strips at the back and keep the PC directly under the fan. If you can afford it, consider air-conditioning the room.

Avoid keeping the PC in the direct wind flow of an air (desert) cooler. These spray tiny water droplets that can cause short circuits on the mother board. Ideally, switch off the cooler before turning the PC on. I have suffered, along with my PC, without a cooler these 5 years, and can report that with judicious use, we're both fine.

Many vendors use cheap fans with relatively short lives. If a fan dies on you, your first warning might be a general and seemingly-inexplicable system failure. So keep checking for a howling noise within your system case, and open the case to clean the CPU fan every 6 months or so.

If you over-clock your PC, it may die in the middle of summer. But because of "Over clockers" (people who push the CPU to speeds way beyond rated capacity), there are plenty of shareware utilities available to monitor system temperatures. And as a result of over clocking, much R&D has been done into thermal issues. The loss of CPU cooling for even a second can fry a highly-over clocked chip.

Most system vendors have adopted over clockers’ tools and techniques to cope with thermal issues. Many mother boards today have built-in sensors to track fan speed, and system and CPU temperatures. There's lots of software on the Net, some specific to one brand or type of mother board. Others support many brands and models. We recommend a visit to Tweakfiles (http://www.tweakfiles.com/diagnostic/).

MotherBoard Monitor (http://mbm.livewiredev.com/) is the best-known thermal monitoring tool. When you run it on a PC equipped with the appropriate thermal and fan sensors, it displays the information it collects in the Windows system tray. It also can sound alarms or launch corrective actions (like shutting down) if it detects an out-of-spec reading. The developer's site contains all the information you need, including whether or not your system can use it. The MBM site is also a good place to find out the maximum recommended temperatures for your particular CPU. If your specific brand, type and model of CPU isn't listed, try the HeatSink Guide (http://www.heatsink-guide.com/maxtemp.htm).

You can also try MBProbe (http://web.bham.ac.uk/jst829/mbprobe/) that monitors voltages, temperatures and fan speeds using hardware monitoring available on many modern mother boards. Features include 9 voltage, 4 temperature and 3 fan speed readings, automatic detection of monitoring chips, temperature display in Celsius or Fahrenheit, and event and history logs.

Both freewares are a bit awkward to configure correctly. But once they;re running, they're unobtrusive and cool. This simple system monitoring helps tell you whether your system has a serious thermal problem or not.

Although Windows 9x doesn't, Windows 2000 can stop the CPU to keep temperatures down. This is not sleep, but a stop (HLT-ed) instruction. For example when you’re typing, a quarter second or longer might pass between keystrokes. If you have a 500 MHz processor your CPU is idle for 125 million cycles. If many or most of these cycles can halted, the CPU will stay cooler. Plus there's power-saving too.

CPU coolers alone won't do the trick. You need to ensure that the air path inside the case in unobstructed too. But all these tips should make for cooler computing this summer.

G Menon
[email protected]

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