Computers are getting faster and faster every week. Faster, denser CPU’s, motherboards, and video cards are coming out all the time and all of these things generate more and more heat. It used to be that you could count on the little fan in your power supply to suck the hot air out and keep everything humming along just fine. Try that on some machines today and you’ll end up with a heap of smoking silicon and plastic and a decidedly dull, blank monitor to stare at.

The other thing to remember is that the cooler your computer parts are, the better they work, generally. The reason for this is that when your sensitive parts start to heat up, expansion occurs. And with die sizes shrinking even minor variances begin to degrade performance relatively quickly

So whether you’re building your own machine or making significant upgrades to one that you’ve purchased already, you’re going to at least want to give some thought to keeping it cool and happy.

What we’re going to try to do is give you a basic understanding of the basic principles of keeping a computer cool and the various means that you can use to achieve maximum coolness. The most common method of keeping a computer cool is to use a combination of fans, heat sinks and a little bit of chemistry to move the hot air out of your computer and into the surrounding air, replacing it with cool, friendly air.