PC Cooling Fans - 5 Tips on Choosing a Cooling Fan For Your Personal Computer

Keeping your computer cool is vital. An overheating computer will become unreliable and may freeze or crash on a regular basis. Indeed, parts of it may expire altogether. Even if a computer does not become hot enough for the above to happen, the life of internal components may be significantly reduced.

The following tips will ensure that your computer remains cool without excessive fan noise.

1. Quality

Most personal computers are cooled by fans. It is therefore very important that the fans are reliable. To ensure reliability, premium brand units should be purchased. They do not necessarily cost much more than an average generic model and should indeed be cost effective as they usually have a longer lifespan.

To decide whether a fan is of required quality it would be wise to check through fan reviews that can be found in computer magazines or, better still, on the internet.

2. Size

Bigger fans are definitely better. Large fans can shift more air than a smaller fan and for a given volume of air, can do it more quietly. So if you have a case that can house large fans then go for this option. Given the ability to move more air means that larger fans can be run at a lower speed which, of course, means less noise.

3. Mountings

Some fans come with rubber mountings. These can help to reduce case vibrations and therefore noise. If a fan is only provided with screws then consider purchasing rubber or silicon mountings which are available separately.

4. Connection

Fans come with either 3 or 4-pin connectors. A 4-pin connector will mean that the fan's speed can be controlled by the motherboard (if the motherboard has the facility to do so). This is particularly useful for CPU fans as the fan's speed can be throttled down if the CPU is being lightly used. The effectiveness of this action may not be so pronounced with system fans.

3-pin connectors will allow fans to be connected to corresponding connectors on the motherboard or directly to the PC power supply.

5. Fan controllers

Some fans come with a speed controller. This may take the form of a small potentiometer or simply a resistor to be connected between the fan connector and the power supply. If your chosen fan does not include a speed controller or cannot be controlled by the motherboard, then consider buying a separate controller. Cooling fans do not necessarily have to run continually at full speed and it is worthwhile slowing them down a little to cut down on noise.