Is a good heatsink important?

The heatsink is a very important element in a PC, since the temperature at which the processor works will depend directly on it, which in turn directly affects its useful life and the performance it is capable of. offer. If our heatsink is not enough, the processor will overheat, surely it will not burn due to the security measures that include both AMD and Intel, but it will lower its clock frequency and with it the performance, in addition to being able to shorten its useful life.

Index of contents

How does the heatsink work and why is it so important?

There are hundreds of heatsinks on the market, but they all share a very similar, if not identical, performance. All heatsinks are made of metal, a material that is an excellent conductor of heat, being mainly aluminum although they also contain copper elements to improve performance. Copper is a better conductor of heat than aluminum, but it is much more expensive and heavier, so it is only used strategically in some of the most important parts.

One of the most important parts of a heatsink is heatpipes, a term that can be translated as heat pipes or heat pipes. These heatpipes are made of copper and are in contact with the processor, absorbing the heat generated by it and then transmitting it to the radiator, the other important part of any heatsink. Heatpipes are attached to a base, usually also made of copper to improve heat transfer.

Heatpipes are copper tubes inside which there is a liquid, very important for their operation. The liquid evaporates by absorbing the heat from the processor, so it rises to the top of the heatsink and transmits the heat to the aluminum radiator. Once this is done, it condenses and drops again to repeat the cycle infinitely.

Once we have seen the heatpipes we have to talk about the radiator, which is usually made of aluminum to lower the price of the heatsink and reduce its weight, the latter is important to prevent the motherboard from breaking due to supporting excessive weight. The radiator is made up of a multitude of very thin aluminum fins, the purpose of these fins is to maximize the surface of the radiator, since its ability to eliminate heat depends directly on it.

Size matters a lot

This is one of the cases where size matters, the bigger the radiator, the greater cooling capacity the heatsink will have. This is why top-of-the-range models like the Noctua NH D15 are so large. The number of heatpipes and their thickness also matter, since the more and thicker they are, the greater capacity they will have to transport heat to the radiator.

The last key element of the heatsink is the fan, which is responsible for generating a large air flow and passing it through the fins of the aluminum radiator, with which the heat of the aluminum will transfer to the air, cooling the heatsink and making it possible continue to absorb the heat generated by the processor. As a small conclusion we can say that the purpose of the heatsink is for heat to be transferred from the processor to the air.

And what about liquid cooling?

Liquid cooling works exactly the same, the difference is that the envelope heatpipes replaced by a coolant, which is capable of absorbing a large amount of heat from the processor to transfer it to the radiator. Ultimately, the air from the fan continues to be responsible for dissipating all the heat, so it is still air-cooled.

There are many AIO liquid cooling kits on the market , which come ready to be mounted on the PC in a very simple way. This type of cooling is usually more efficient, although it is not always the case, since low-end liquid cooling will give less performance than a high-end air sink, the latter being even cheaper.

A great advantage of liquid cooling is that it is more effective in removing hot air from the PC, in addition to the fact that the motherboard does not have to support just a little weight.

Heatsinks that include AMD and Intel in their processors are not the best option

Both AMD and Intel include heatsinks in their processors, at least in most of them. These are very basic and inefficient heatsinks , especially in the case of Intel, in addition to mounting small fans that have to rotate very quickly to generate enough air, which translates into more noisy operation. AMD has greatly improved its heatsinks in the past two years, although they are still far from the best models on the market. In general, we can buy an inexpensive heatsink such as the Cooler Master Hyper 212X that will offer us a great improvement in temperature and performance compared to the reference for only about 35 euros.

If we are going to make very intensive use of very demanding programs with the processor such as video rendering, play modern games or want to overclock, it is mandatory that we buy a high-end heatsink, as the reference will fall short.

We recommend reading our post on Best heatsinks, fans and liquid cooling for PC

Final words and conclusion on the importance of the heatsink

At this point we are already clear that the heatsink is one of the most important elements of a PC, and we must invest money in a model according to the characteristics of our PC and the use we are going to make. If you are going to mount a PC with a Ryzen 3, Core i3, Pentium or Celeron processor, you can use the heatsink that is included with the processor, although it is recommended to opt for a more advanced model so that it works more efficiently and silently.

If you are going to mount a Core i5, Core i7, Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 it is almost mandatory that you acquire a heatsink with good characteristics, especially in the case of Intel, since its processors get quite hot.

If you have any questions, you can leave a comment or open a thread in our forum, we will be delighted to help you.

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