Heat Dissipation in a Computer

Abstract

Computers use electric current to process information. Heat is dissipated in a computer component whenever current flows through it and the heat dissipation causes unavoidable heat buildup and a subsequent temperature rise at and around the component. High operating temperatures is dangerous to the safety and reliability of components since the failure rate of computer components increases almost exponentially with the increase in operating temperatures. Computer industries are building smaller and denser circuits to improve the computing power and portability. The main drawback of this miniaturization is the increase in the amount of heat produced per unit area of the components, so huge amount of money in the semiconductor industry is put towards thermal management. This study sought to determine the amount of heat dissipated by computers. Compaq P4, Compaq P3 and Dell P4 desktop computers were used for the study. The heat dissipation of the desktop computers under varying processor workload was found by measuring the current and voltage from the PSU to the motherboard and HDD of the computers using a digital multimeter. Results show that computers dissipate a lot of heat; in the order of hundreds of joules per second. The heat dissipation was found to increase with an increase in the processor workload.

Keywords; Heat dissipation, Computer, Power consumption