A person striving to keep up with progress and keep up to date is forced to acquire a computer and learn to use it. This is easily explained, because computer technology is integrating more and more tightly into every area of life every year. Her help to a person is obvious: high-precision calculations, management of responsible technological processes, entertainment and much more. At the same time, the person also needs the ability to maintain his electronic assistant in a healthy state. One of the most important parameters of a computer is the temperature of its processor. To understand what it is and why it is so important, you should go a little deeper into the device microprocessor technology.
All electronic circuits consist of a huge number of elements: transistors, capacitors, diodes with a certain resistance. One of the properties of electric current is the heating of conductors caused by it, due to electrical resistance. Any microcircuit, in fact, is a combination of many such elements assembled in a single case, so its heating is not a malfunction, but a natural physical process, although undesirable. The fact is that high temperature changes the properties of the semiconductors and metals that make up the microcircuit, which means it leads to unpredictable consequences, up to thermal breakdown and its failure.
One of the key elements of any computer is a microprocessor or CPU (Central Processing Unit). If you look inside the system unit (case), then the largest chip on the motherboard will be the very same processor. It always has a cooling metal radiator and a blowing fan. The number of transistors in modern processors has long exceeded 500 million, so temperature control is simply necessary. The specification always indicates the maximum temperature of the processor, which should not be exceeded. For example, for modern Intel processors, the "Tcase max" (temperature limit) is up to 60 degrees. Accordingly, the permissible processor temperature is all those values that do not exceed "Tcase max", and the lower they are, the better.
CPU temperature depends on:
- ambient temperature. With its growth, heat transfer deteriorates;
- contact area of the radiator and processor. That is why with good heatsinks the side in contact with the processor is polished to a shine;
- processor generation. Newer models are made according to an improved technical process, which provides for the reduction of the components making up the microcircuit;
- supply voltage. Since the current and voltage, in accordance with the well-known Ohm's law, are directly dependent on each other, and an increase in the current strength causes an increase in the temperature in the conductor, it is quite clear that the lower the voltage value, the less heating. The tendency to reduce supply voltages is clearly visible in each new generation of microprocessors;
- frequency of his work. The more operations the processor performs in a unit of time, the correspondingly more thermal energy will be released.
In addition to all of the above, the temperature of the processor depends on several other reasons, among which it should be noted the support of various proprietary technologies. Manufacturers have long realized that the low temperature of the processor can serve as an additional argument in favor of buying their product. Therefore, the processors were "taught" to reduce their frequency in the absence of a significant computational load, to reduce the consumed voltage and turn off inactive logic blocks.