Upgrading the VGA cooler can improve airflow and stability, but factors such as price, noise, and available space should be considered. Heat sinks remove heat from electronics and are often combined with fans for active cooling. Dual-slot designs offer increased heat dissipation and air circulation, but may not fit all motherboard layouts. Lower to mid-range video cards can use slow, quiet fans or passive units, while high-end cards may require water cooling. Cost and compatibility with specific video card layouts should also be considered.
As one of the most complex components in a computer system, the video graphics array (VGA) card is also among the hottest when in use. Upgrading the VGA cooler can result in better overall airflow within the system and can provide additional stability. When choosing a cooler for a VGA card, price, noise, and the amount of available space should be the most important factors. Professional and customer reviews can provide great insight into the kind of problems and successes other users have had with a particular VGA heat sink.
Heat sinks are common in electronics. Complex semiconductor chips can be destroyed by the heat they generate, and heat sinks are designed to remove heat from them. They are made of materials that conduct heat well and have large surfaces that allow heat to radiate. A heat sink is often combined with a fan, which is referred to as “active cooling” and further improves performance by passing cooler air across its surface. Ideally, a VGA cooler will provide heat sinks for not only the graphics processing unit, but the video memory as well.
When choosing a VGA cooler, it’s important to consider how much space is available in your computer case. Some VGA coolers are dual-slot, which means they’re so wide that they take up the motherboard slot where the video card sits, and the slot next to it as well. Some heatsinks also use three slots per case and offer the option of adding fans that take up two more slots.
The advantage of dual-slot designs, other than increased heat dissipation and air circulation due to their size, is that the second slot is usually used to expel hot air from the system as exhaust. This helps keep the central processing unit (CPU) and other components cool. However, not all motherboard layouts will allow room for a double-wide VGA heat sink, especially when two video cards are used in combination. Before selecting such a drive, it is important to make sure that it actually fits in the case.
Video card coolers tend to be among the noisiest components in a computer, and performance improvements often come at an additional cost. If you are using a lower to mid-range video card, there are cooler units available that use several heat pipes to transfer heat to a large heat sink. These use slow, quiet fans – or are sometimes passive units with no fans – and typically provide a means of controlling fan speed. Drives of this type are generally not powerful enough to handle the increased cooling requirements of a high-end video card. For these, the preferred solution is one that pumps water through a cooling block attached to the VGA card.
Cost is another consideration. While VGA coolers are moderately priced, you may prefer to spend the money on a better video card. The decision is further complicated by the fact that many of these coolers are designed for a specific video card layout. That expensive cooler may not be reusable if you later have to buy a card from a different manufacturer, or even a card from a different series from the same manufacturer.
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