Maximize the Lifespan of Your CPU Cooler: Essential Maintenance and Troubleshooting Guide
Having the proper cooling is essential for both the performance and longevity of your computer’s CPU. In order to keep your CPU running like new you need to make sure you take care of your CPU cooler first.
In this article, we will go over the importance of maintaining your CPU cooler and how to troubleshoot it.
That way you can keep your CPU and cooler’s longevity so that they can keep working like they are brand new.
We will go through how to clean and maintain your cooler, as well as how to fix common problems. By following these steps you can ensure that your CPU cooler will always be working at its best which will help extend your computer’s lifespan.
Maintaining Your CPU Cooler
Maintenance is very important if you want to keep the optimal performance of your CPU cooler for a long time.
Clean Your CPU Cooler
One very important thing that gets overlooked when you think about maintenance is keeping your cooler clean by frequently removing dust and debris that accumulates inside of your computer over time.
Chances are that if you have never cleaned the inside of your computer before then there will be a lot of dust build-up.
You should check out “How Often Should You Clean Your PC” to learn more about how to clean, and how often to clean your PC to prevent dust from accumulating and affecting your performance.
However, a quick solution to this is to use compressed air or a small brush and gently spray or brush the dust off the cooling fans of the CPU cooler.
If you are using compressed air make sure to spray the bearings of the cooling fans that way the fans don’t break down as fast. This will extend the lifespan of the cooling fan.
A small brush should be used to clean the dust inside the cracks of the heatsink especially if you are using an air cooler.
The reason for this is that heat will get trapped in the dust as it is heat conductive, and it will slow down the cooling process for your CPU.
Replace The Thermal Paste
Another important step in maintaining your CPU cooler is to check and replace the thermal paste from time to time.
The reason for this is that over time, the thermal paste will start to dry out. This isn’t very good for the cooling process because the thermal paste is what transfers the heat from the CPU to the heatsink.
Replacing the thermal paste frequently will help the longevity of both the cooler and the CPU by preventing overheating which can cause damage to your system.
To learn more about this you should check out: “How Often Should You Replace Your Thermal Paste.”
Monitor Your CPU Temperature
Monitoring your CPU temperature can help you indicate when you need to perform any maintenance on your CPU cooler.
I like to use a software called CPU-Z as this allows me to monitor my CPU temperature to see if I need better cooling or not.
Every couple of weeks I believe you should run a stress test on your CPU and log the temperatures in order to figure out what’s normal for your system.
If you start to see temperatures rising then that’s when you know you need to perform some type of maintenance on your cooler.
Troubleshooting Your CPU Cooler
Next, we are going to talk about troubleshooting your CPU cooler.
Troubleshooting is essential to extending the lifespan of your CPU cooler because it will help you determine what problems are arising and how to fix them.
CPU Overheating
Probably the most common problem is CPU overheating. If your CPU was previously running at a normal temperature and suddenly your CPU starts to overheat, this will not only affect the performance of your computer, but it will also damage your CPU.
You can tell if your CPU is overheating if your computer starts stuttering, or if it randomly turns off in the middle of doing a task.
If your computer starts stuttering, then this is a sign of thermal throttling.
Thermal throttling is the CPUs way of protecting itself from overheating.
Another thing that you can do is use CPU-Z to monitor your CPU as we talked about above.
Sometimes your CPU will be slightly over its recommended temperature which is not enough to activate the CPUs safety systems, but it is enough to slowly ruin its lifespan.
Go to your CPUs manual to figure out what the recommended temperatures are that way you can troubleshoot this problem by itself.
You should check out “Why Managing Your CPU Heat Matters.” To learn more.
Troubleshoot Your Cooling Fans
Another problem that can arise with your CPU cooler is a malfunctioning cooling fan.
Using a program like SpeedFan or AIDA64 will help you spot a fan that is not performing up to par.
Maybe your CPU cooler is fine, but it is just not sufficient enough to keep your CPU cool enough.
If this is the case then you should consider purchasing a new pair of cooling fans.
This could save you a lot of money if you were originally thinking of purchasing a brand-new CPU cooler.
There are a few things you can look for when purchasing a new computer fan for your cooler.
The first is to buy a fan that is a lot more efficient and has more static air pressure, such as the Noctua NF-A12x25 LS-PWM. Or upgrade to a larger fan size.
Upgrading from a 120mm fan to a 140mm fan will increase airflow, without increasing energy, noise, or speed.
Conclusion
Having the proper cooling is essential for the longevity and performance of your CPU. The CPU cooler is a key component of your system so you need to make sure that you keep your cooler well-maintained so that you can increase its lifespan.
We have discussed the importance of cleaning and maintaining your CPU, and you now know how to diagnose and fix any problems that come your way.
As long as you follow these tips you shouldn’t have any major problems happen in the future.
If you are still having problems with your CPU cooler, or have any questions about maintaining yours specifically, then feel free to contact us at [email protected].
