Can I Use An External Fan To Cool My PC? Brief Answer

Are you looking for Can I Use An External Fan To Cool My PC? Regarding enhancing machine power, laptop engineers keep pushing the envelope. Unfortunately, the streamlined design’s space limitations come at the expense of issues with heat.

To keep your laptop cool, use a fan. A typical fan won’t function efficiently, though, as the air will have trouble getting to the interior components. Use an external laptop fan and put it in a cooling pad or stand for the best cooling performance.

In response to this query, the remainder of this article will go over a few related subjects, such as Can I Use An External Fan To Cool My PC? The distinction between active and passive cooling techniques, things to think about when buying a laptop cooling pad or stand, and the advantages of buying a fan to cool your laptop.

Can I Use An External Fan To Cool My PC?

As your desktop computer operates, heat is produced, and inside the enclosed tower, this heat can reach dangerous component-killing levels. Although internal fans aid in cooling the device down, they are not always sufficient. External cooling fans can aid in maintaining airflow through the System and maintaining a healthy temperature.

Why do Laptops Overheat?

Your laptop may be overheating for several straightforward reasons. For instance, dust buildup may be obstructing your exhaust vents. Moreover, the cause of your issue can be a broken internal fan. Overheating can also result from degraded thermal compounds between the CPU and heat sink. Likewise, your issue can be caused by a displaced or obstructed heat sink.

Certain circumstances call for acquiring an external cooling device to keep your laptop working at its ideal temperature. For instance, you might have added new hardware, such as a speedier hard drive, video card, or RAM card. Improved equipment frequently consumes more system resources than the laptop was intended to support, which causes overheating.

A computer system may occasionally get overloaded after installing a new operating system. For instance, recent upgrades like the Windows 10 upgrade are known for making laptops overheat. Let’s look at possible options for employing an external fan to cool your laptop now that we’ve discussed some of the causes of your issues. But, we must first talk about the active and passive cooling systems.

Active Cooling Systems For Laptops

To move heat away from your laptop, Active cooling systems circulate air around the body of the gadget using one or more fans. While some dynamic cooling systems pull air away from the computer, others force it in the opposite direction. Active cooling systems have the option of manual or automatic fan speed control. Also, with some models, the speed is fixed.

To aid in convecting heat, most active cooling solutions in the form of cooling pads direct air across the bottom of your laptop. Yet, a few devices blow air horizontally over your computer from the rear or side.

The fact that such versions can be positioned vertically and keep you and your computer cool gives them an advantage over cooling pads. Two of our favorite models are the Enermax FanIcer and the Vantec LapCool CrossFlow fan.

Factors To Consider When Choosing A Laptop Cooling System

Active cooling systems are the most efficient way to keep your laptop cool, especially if you have a high-end computer unless the sound of fans annoys you. When buying a cooling system, keep the following aspects in mind:

• Cooling capacity. One to five fans are often included with cooling pads. We advise taking into account one with three or more fans, minimum.
• The fan speed. The brand and model can have a significant impact on fan speed. Higher RPMs are preferable since more speed results in more airflow. The most common cooling pads spin at a 1000 RPM rate.
• Different speeds. Variable fan speeds are often available with more expensive cooling pads. If you choose this course of action, you want to eliminate uncertainty by getting a cooling pad with automatic speed control.
• Size. Ensure the cooling pad you choose is made to fit your laptop before you buy it.
• Noise. Even though most cooling pads are quiet, this should be considered when buying one. You can always spend a few minutes reading customer reviews and searching for noise-related concerns.
• Flexible role. Most cooling pads and stands have a tilting feature that enables you to position your laptop at a convenient angle.

Benefits Of Purchasing A Fan To Cool Your Laptop

Getting a fan for your laptop has several advantages. Those benefits grow if you purchase a cooling pad or stand instead of a regular home fan. You may maximize the performance of your laptop by running it at a cooler temperature. By utilizing a fan to lower your laptop’s temperature, you reduce the risk of harming your computer’s motherboard, processors, and battery.

Also, running your laptop, a few degrees colder generally lengthens its lifespan. The workload and speed of the internal fans are also reduced when an external cooling source is used, which lowers the quantity of dust that accumulates around those fans and your vents.

Type Of Case Fans

Both intake and exhaust case fans are present. This ensures that warm air is pushed out of one side of your System while cool air from the outside is drawn in and used to cool essential components. Intake fans are usually on the front at the bottom of a Computer case, whereas exhaust or intake fans are typically on the rear at the top.

The most common case fans are either 120mm or 140mm in size, although depending on the case you are using, there are far more extensive (and smaller) possibilities. The airflow these giant fans produce is often more significant than the smaller options, which produce higher static pressure.

How Many Case Fans Do I Need?

How you use your PC and the case you select for your build, significantly impact how many fans you need. Another factor to consider while planning and building your System is the ability to have several fans, which will help it run more effectively in most modern cases. You must consider the type of workload you will be handling when choosing how many case fans to purchase.

Small operations, known as burst workloads, demand the CPU to perform in brief bursts. This could be normal web browsing, design work, or applications like Photoshop that use small bursts of energy and allow your computer to recuperate.

Gaming, animation, and lengthy, taxing exports are examples of sustained workloads that will put more strain on your System over time. Naturally, these more demanding tasks will require your GPU to operate at a faster rate, which will raise the temperature. With this in mind, you must choose how much cooling your System requires.

One or two fans ought to be sufficient for only briefly challenging workloads. Your System should be able to function at a respectable capacity with just one intake fan, one exhaust fan, and one or two outtake fans to supply cool air. A typical PC with specific needs will likely need a few more case fans.

For most systems, 1-2 exhaust fans and 2-3 intake fans should be adequate. You’ll want more if you continually press your computer to perform quickly. To keep your GPU cool and your systems operating, 2 or 3 exhaust fans and 4-5 intake fans should be sufficient, although individual circumstances will apply.

Who Does Need A Cooling Pad?

Not that this means no one should ever purchase a laptop cooler. A cooling pad may be just what you need in certain situations; in those cases, it is an inexpensive fix for a few annoyances.

A cooling pad makes a difference if you’re using an older laptop that frequently overheats, which causes it to shut down, reboot, or become too hot to handle to extend its usable lifespan. Still, it’s a temporary fix for a persistent issue.

Your laptop needs repair, cleaning, or possibly both if it becomes so hot that you could build a grilled cheese sandwich. Dust is most likely to blame since it obstructs fan vents and suffocates interior cooling components. To remove the dust bunnies, open the chassis or clear it out with a can of pressurized air.

If you’ve exhausted a weak system, you might additionally want a cooler. The latest edition of the Sims may operate on your Pentium-powered laptop, but that doesn’t imply it’s optimized for it. In these cases, you could discover that a cooling pad prevents the laptop from overheating.

But, our testing results show that cooling is all it will achieve; there is no way for an external fan to increase the number of frames your laptop can produce magically, but it will keep things a little cooler.

A cooling pad can also make you more comfortable using your laptop while sitting on your lap, in bed, or propped up with pillows or blankets. The majority of laptop coolers are made to be placed on a desk or table; like the Targus Lap Chill Mat AWE55US, is made to be used on a lap.

Most of the advantage in these situations comes from a cooling pad’s regular ventilation space, which prevents pillows or blankets from obstructing the laptop’s built-in fan vents. This is crucial since using a heated laptop can seriously harm your health and affect male fertility, as well as the evocatively titled “Toasted Skin Syndrome”.

Conclusion

Here we conclude, Can I Use An External Fan To Cool My PC? Another factor is how comfortable your workstation is. If your laptop constantly spits hot air at you like a steady flow of steam from a subway grate, you may want to direct that hot air somewhere else.

A laptop cooler can be quite helpful in that regard. By raising your laptop screen off the desk and closer to eye level, cooling pads with adjustable height and tilt help improve posture and reduce neck pain.

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