Learn why your CPU cooler will fail before your CPU
Episode #13-03 released on September 19, 2022
Watch on Youtube
Download MP3 Audio
Your CPU cooler is more likely to die before your CPU. Your processor has been designed with various tolerances and examined thoroughly for its performance specifications. While, the processor is a complex network of transistors, nothing in it is moving in the same way as a fan would.
Your CPU cooler is aided by a fan or pump of some kind. Pumps and fans operate by rotating a blade which is often equipped with bearings or sleeves, and these are the components that get worn and fail out right. Whenever a fan becomes unbalanced, it is because the sleeve or bearing is worn out and no longer staying level.
There are many reasons why the bearing or sleeve of a fan or pump becomes worn. For starters, it has to either contain lubricant or have a way to eliminate friction by magnetic levitation. Lubricant itself wears down, dries out or is even pushed out, and that is if we can guarantee it stays clean. If the lubricant becomes dirty, that introduces friction into the bearing or sleeve. If the part is magnetically suspended, then the issue is related to dirt entering the area. There is, also, issue that the magnets become weaker with time, reducing the amount of gap in the sleeve, and introducing more and more friction with time.
The placement of the fans can, also, impact the lifespan of the fan and pump. And therefore, the ones chosen are often designed for their location itself.
What happens to the CPU while the cooler is failing?
As your cooler starts to fail, whether due to the fan or pump wearing itself out, the temperatures of the heatsink will remain higher. The cooler will not be as efficient and effective at eliminating heat from the system. Your processor will experience higher than average operating temperatures. As the cooler continues to fail, the temperature will eventually reach a tipping point where you will attain the max safe operating temperature, and the second you pass that, your computer will turn itself off. And before it gets there, your processor will underclock, under volt itself, and all this to avoid damaging the system.
Now, if you can still turn your system on, but it turns itself off, the cooler is the only part of the computer that needs to be serviced or replaced. If the system dies, odds are that the mainboard died, not the CPU. CPUs are so well built, the long after a product has ended, there are still plenty of working CPUs, but the quantity of available mainboards available for them keeps going down, until one day, all we have left, are working processors and nothing to use them with.
And all that is why your CPU cooler is more likely to die before your CPU.
Host : Steve Smith | Music : | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Dot Net