Re: [PCWorks] What's a heatsink? (Was Re: Thanks to list members, and KEEP the posts coming!)
- From: Hugh Vandervoort <hughv2@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: pcworks@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 04 Apr 2009 18:07:53 -0400
I'd have to quibble with the idea that fans and heat sinks don't "cool".
A heat exchanger does exactly that, and a fan moves hot air from one
place to another, which sounds like cooling to me.
Only a quibble, not to be confused with Quidditch.
David Grossman wrote:
> Sue,
>
> In ye olde days, back when people like me had hair, serious computers were
> maintained in big rooms with air conditioners. I recall working on a PDP-11,
> and some of the senior members of this group may remember even bigger
> monstrosities.
>
> Yes, smaller and relatively pathetic computers did not need air
> conditioners, but any business or academic computer (that only had a
> fraction of the oomph and storage of today's computers) needed big,
> expensive air conditioners. Even so, the rooms were quite warm. Those air
> conditioners were rarely serious competition for the heat emitted by the
> computers.
>
> Today's computers (and especially parts such as the microprocessor) still
> emit a great deal of heat, even though they no longer use vacuum tubes. As a
> computer teacher, I work in an air-conditioned computer lab, but it
> sometimes gets uncomfortably hot in the summertime.
>
> Put your hand behind your computer, and you'll feel hot air from the
> computer fan. That's one way of making the computer cooler. Another way is
> the heat sink that Clint described. The fan and the heat sink do not cool
> the computer, but they make it usable.
>
> This information is not to be confused with those computers that REALLY
> heated up a few summers ago. Their Sony batteries actually caught fire.
> However, that's material for another thread.
>
> David Grossman
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