How To Fix Overheating Computers: A Computer Cooling Product Showcase

Electronics that run faster and better also generate heat, it is a simple law of physics. The more power in an electronic component or circuit the more heat is produced. Central and graphics processors generate lots of heat as well as hard disc drives and power supplies due to their use of larger voltages. A power supply takes 120 volts from your outlet and converts it down to voltages the computer uses for all its electronics, this generates heat. A hard disc drive has a motor that spins the discs around that generates heat as well as the electronics inside the drive. All this heat inside your computer can cause problems with your processor, memory and other components to malfunction and fail.

Heat inside your computer can be removed several different ways but the safest and most efficient way is very simple. I will discuss several products to help remove the heat from your PC and show which ones are the most effective and which ones depend more on how you use them than just the fact that you are using them.

Placement is the key to all your computer problems with heat. If you have good airflow inside your computer the heat will leave as the cooler room air comes in. This is a simple fact that I learned very long ago while in the military. So in order to have any of the products I describe work to the best of their ability you need to correctly place them and other things inside your computer. In the Air Force and for the equipment we used lots of money was spent to ensure proper cooling of electronics.

Bays of electronic components need to be cooled and air just being shoved in is not enough. The air has to flow through the bay in order for the components to receive the benefit of the cooler room air being pushed into the bay. Just forcing air in and not having it go out somewhere makes for a heat build up inside the bay.

Dust inside your computer can also cause problems both with air flow and due to some properties of dust itself. A dirty computer will not only fail and receive errors from dust conducting electricity that builds up on components but causes heat to build up as the dust acts like an insulator.

So good airflow is the key to keeping your computer cool and that is what I want to test. All the products on the market that I test for cooling your computer have one thing in common, they push air.

A word about liquid cooling and why you may need it. If you are in a high heat area and have constant problems with your computer it may pay to install or have installed a liquid cooling system. Liquid cooling can be thought of like a radiator on a car only for your computer. Water or other liquid is pushed through small tubes and fittings to keep your components cool.

This liquid cooling is very handy and a convenient way to quickly cool a computer that has heat problems due to really overworking components or an ambient temperature around the computer that is always high. If you overclock your computer in any way liquid cooling is a very good idea, overclocking means to use a higher voltage or other settings on a component to get it to work more. If the room your computer is in is always hot either cooling the computer more or cooling the room is a good idea as well.

You can find liquid cooling help at several online websites or ask a computer store for help if you think you need it. But go to a local computer expert, not a chain store like Best Buy. The local guys that fix computers and play around with computers for fun are the ones who will know what they are doing.

So on to keeping our computer cool and what you can do. If your having constant problems and think cooling is to blame here is a handy way that can help you find out if your computer is too hot inside. Find the coolest place in your house and put the computer there, a basement or inside room with the AC cranked on would work. If you have the room way cold and are not getting errors you may have a heat problem.

Heat problems show themselves most often as errors that are very hard to diagnose to find out what actually is causing the problem. Often you will notice random errors no matter what program your running but especially if your processor or graphics cards is being worked heavily such as in a game.

Errors such as blue screen or stop errors due to heat are often hard to diagnose but if heat is causing the problems it is easy to fix. Simply take the cover off the computer and look inside as well as feel. Don't touch things but with the computer on feel how hot it is inside and see if it feels warmer inside than out. A good computer with proper ventilation should not be much warmer than the room air.

My computer has plenty of stuff inside and I can get the temperature inside the case a degree or two above the room air. It is very easy and I have plenty of things running inside my system; two hard disc drives, one DVD drive, two video cards in Crossfire mode and one floppy drive. I have at times had more than this and my system has stayed cool by using a couple of extra fans or some other products I will discuss in a bit.

The first thing you need to take care of is putting everything in a good place inside your computer for good air flow. You may not even need to buy anything extra to get your computer to cool off, simply rearranging things may do the trick.

In the first picture I have shown how my computer was when I received it, one hard drive, one DVD drive, one power supply and three fans. The video card I show in the original drawing I had to install but will not show it in the rest for clarity of what I am doing. The video card is one of the main heat producing devices in a computer and it is essential to have good airflow over that as well as the CPU cooling block, the motherboard and the hard drives. The CPU cooling block is a large heat sink usually with a fan on it that sits on your motherboard.

In my original computer setup I had three fans with two blowing air in and the rear fan blowing air out the back. The side fan and the top fan blew air in to add air but it was not a good airflow pattern. There is not a very good airflow into the front as the front has small inlet holes and the top fan blows air directly into the power supply. The power supply I have has two fans that take air from inside the computer and blows it out the rear of the power supply and the back of the computer. So the top fan blows air from outside into the power supply and out the back of the computer to help cool the power supply only.

In my testing I use a small sensor that is taped to the side of the drive cage on the right hand side of the computer as my temperature for inside the computer. I also use a program that measures internal temperatures for the motherboard, hard drives and central processor for an additional check to make sure I am getting good results.

The room air is measured by an electronic clock/thermometer in my office to show the room temperature is always the same give or take a degree. While measuring all the temperatures I used the room air temperature and saw the difference from that to the temperatures inside the computer or on different components.

I always let the computer stand and run for about thirty minutes after installing the covers and turning the computer on. This showed the best standard of use for my computer and how the temperature is affected by the fans or simply moving things around inside. The temperature of the computer at idle or not doing anything intensive is a good measure of how well the cooling airflow is inside.

The more use the computer is put to the hotter it will be inside but to test a constant use such as video gaming is pretty erratic and difficult to accurately measure. So I just let the computer sit while running and watched the temperatures.

When I thought of this project and searched the internet I found the best solution is to have good airflow into and out of the computer. The front of my PC has a temperature gauge and button panel that takes up about a three inch circle so the front has a small area for air to flow into. There are 50 holes 1/8 of an inch in diameter in the front for air flow in. There are also two holes, one on top and one on the side for either intake or exhaust. The rear of the computer has a spot for one fan up to a 120MM size and some other slots.

I needed more airflow in for my computer to keep cool that was for sure. When I installed my one video card and hard drive the case temperature was about five degrees higher than room temperature but I still had some adding of other components so I waited and received several products to check out for cooling my computer. I received two video cards that you connect in what is called Crossfire mode to use both cards to increase your graphics performance. This would not only add another heat producing device into my computer but this video card produces more heat than the first one I received.

The case temperature for the computer as it was originally set up and with two video cards, two hard drives, one floppy drive and one dvd drive was about eight degrees above room temperature. This had to come down, during gaming it would run as much as twelve to fourteen degrees above room temperature and I would get errors and problems from the heat. The very first thing I did was moved my hard drive out of the way of air moving into my computer. The hard drive was right in front of the holes for the front of my computer and blocked air flow. In order to get air to flow through my computer I needed to have a free path so I moved the hard drive up two slots.

So I started not with installing new stuff for cooling such as fans but moving fans around that were already there. I at first tried to turn the side fan around and this cooled down the temperature by a couple of degrees. More air going out made for better cooling. But I still wanted it cooler so decided to try some more fans blowing air in the front. I had some extra fans laying around and put two in the front to increase the airflow in, but only got a degree less with two more fans blowing air in.

I started to test out some of the products to see if getting more air out would help at all, enter the slot fan. A slot fan is a fan that takes the place of a PCI device and sits in the rear slot on the back of your computer where a PCI or video card would be. The slots at the rear of your computer either has a card of some kind or a cover plate and the slot fan sits in one of these slots and plugs into your power supply. I received a slot fan that worked pretty well and was very easy to install.

The Cyclo Slot Fan from Thermaltake pulls air from inside the computer and exhausts it out the rear of the computer through the fan. This worked pretty well and is a very easy solution for exhausting air out the rear of the computer along with the fan that was already there. The Thermaltake Cyclo Slot Fan works so well that it has been a permanent part of my cooling solution since I started this project and have decided to use it until I need the slot space. The Thermaltake Cyclo plugs into your power supply and is an extension to one of your larger four pin power supply cables.

A slot fan that exhausts air out the rear of your computer is a very good idea as this is the airflow pattern that you want for the best airflow through your computer. You want air to flow in one area like the front and out another area like the rear. A slot fan like the Thermaltake Cyclo is a very good cooling solution. This brought the temperature down about two degrees with the slot fan at the rear exhausting hot air and the two fans on the front bringing more air inside.

I also received another fan that works so well that it will be a part of my computer, period. The Scythe Kama Bay 5" System Cooler is a fan that can be used in one of three ways. You can set the fan to blow air up or down inside one of the bays that a CD or DVD drive would go in. The company shows this as two ways to install it, one with the bezel or side of the fan hidden inside your computer behind a plate that you already have or without this plate. The side of the fan is just a plain flat panel so this really does not make much difference other than esthetics. The other way is to have the fan so it pulls air inside your computer using its large 120mm fan. This made a huge difference in my computer cooling bringing the temperature down by about five degrees.

The Scythe fan uses a small connector that connects to your motherboard for its power and has adapters to extend it to be flush with the outside of your PC's front. To install this fan you need to access both sides of your drive cage to screw the adapters into your drive cage. You may also need to remove the front cover of your computer, see your owners manual or get help online from your computer manufacturer for exact details on how to do this. It only took about five minutes to completely install but it does take the place of three drives in the 5.25" drive bay. This is the only drawback to this excellent fan and is the best solution for getting airflow inside my computer.

Next I wanted to try another product I received that is a good all around solution and one that is great for problem components such as memory modules or chip sets. The Spot Cool by Antec is a fan that connects to a motherboard connector and mounts using a screw for your case or motherboard. This fan requires a smaller connector that is on your motherboard for its power and uses an existing screw somewhere in your computer to mount. The little angle bracket with a hole is on the end of a small armored cable that bends and holds its shape so you can mount the fan inside using a motherboard mounting screw or other screw and blow air where you want it.

The Spot Cool fan tilts inside the fans mount as well as the bending of the arm and allows you to direct the fans air onto troubled components like your memory modules or chip sets that typically overheat more often. This product is an excellent one for cooling memory slots but I found that I was not having this problem very much. It would also work to move air around inside the case such as directing air toward your hard drives to cool them down.

I also received a slot fan that plugs into your power supply and sits in a PCI slot to direct air upward inside the computer. This fan is used to directly cool video cards or other slot cards sitting in your computer and to help air flow inside your computer. The Spectrum Fan Card from Vantec is nice for cooling video cards that do not have their own fans and I used it when testing out a video card that has a large heat sink instead of a fan.

This kept the video cards temperature down while gaming and made the heat sink work more efficiently when using a heat sink only video card. The Spectrum Fan Card would not be very good for a video card that already has a fan unless it was on the other side of the card. Having air blowing into a fan by another fan doesn't make it work any better but this solution worked well for the video card that had the heat sink only. The Spectrum Fan Card also has an adjustment for fan speed so if the small amount of fan noise is annoying you can turn down the speed or if you just don't need the full speed of both the fans.

Another slot fan that does double duty due to the mount is a system cooler from Evercool. The Evercool Rocket V installs in one of two ways; as a system fan to blow air across your video card and at your motherboard or to blow air up against your video card from the bottom. The Evercool Rocket V is a great way to either directly cool your video card or cool both your video card and your motherboard for better system cooling.

The Rocket V comes with two metal mounts one of which you screw to the fan body depending on which way you want air to blow. With the fan parallel to your video card it will blow the air from under the fan to your video card. Mounting the fan inside at a right angle to your video card puts it about two inches from the left side panel of your computer blowing air across your video card at your motherboard.

With the Rocket V blowing air at my video card it reduced temperatures of the video card by two degrees. The bigger difference was blowing the air across at the motherboard which lowered the case temperature down to the same as room temperature at idle. This is a setup that has a lot of fans but it does keep things very cool, especially on components of my motherboard.

I received a hard drive cooler that is still inside my computer keeping my main hard drive running cool. The Thermaltake Cyclo HDD Fan screws to the bottom of your hard drive over all those exposed components and runs on power from a four pin connector of your power supply. This fan is great for hard drives and especially for ones that you have stacked inside close together.

The Cyclo HDD Fan works by pulling air in from inside your case and blowing it against the bottom of your hard drive and kept my hard drive cooler by three degrees according to the Speedfan program I used to check the component temperatures. The Cyclo HDD Fan takes a couple of minutes to install and is the best solution for cooling a hard drive that is over heating. It is simple and easy to install and shows the greatest cooling benefits for hard drives.

Another fan for Hard Disc Drives that works almost identically to the Cyclo is from EverCool called the Cool Wheel. The Cool Wheel mounts with four screws to your hard disc drive and blows air in from the two ends and out the bottom of the fans to circulate air from the inside of your case against the bottom of your hard drive. This fan is a bit shorter than the Cyclo fan so would fit easily between hard drives that are stacked inside your computer case.

The Cool Wheel also takes just a minute or two to install and does lower the temperature of the second hard drive in my system by a couple of degrees as well as the Cyclo fan. The EverCool Cool Wheel fan is also a great way to cool a hard drive that may be giving you problems or just to lengthen the life of your drive. The Cool Wheel does have a metal base that contacts directly onto the hard drives frame so heat is also dissipated as the metal plate acts as a heat sink for the drive.

Out of all these solutions for keeping my computer cooler overall the Scythe Kama Bay 5" System Cooler worked the best and made the most difference. The airflow into my computer increased but I also needed more airflow going out so a slot fan like the Cyclo from Thermaltake is a great solution and easy to install. Moving components around and getting more airflow had just as much to do with better airflow into and out of my computer. The hard drive moving up in the drive bay was essential to getting better air coming in and cooling the entire computer.

Using fans like the Antec Spot Cool, the Thermaltake HDD Fan and the Vantec Spectrum Fan Card is a very good solution to keeping individual components and troubled ones cooler. The Evercool Rocket V system cooler is also a great way to cool motherboard components as well as the video card while moving air around inside the case for better system cooling.

All of the products I tested did a good job of moving air around inside my computer. The main thing you want to do in order to cool down the inside of your computer is look at the way things are arranged and ensure the best airflow for your system. I do recommend all of these products from Antec, Evercool, Scythe, Thermaltake and Vantec as ways to keep your computer cooler.

Just remember that good airflow is essential to keeping your computer cool and cooling the main components that generate heat. The CPU with its large heats sink, the video card, the hard drives and the power supply all generate heat and can cause you problems. Keeping these things cool and keeping air flowing through your computer is easy with some thought and understanding and a few simple inexpensive products.