What Is a Passive Heatsink?

Passive cooling refers to the method of installing a heat sink on the chip, and does not require a cooling fan.

Passive cooling

The graphics card and the CPU or other heat-generating components of the computer are divided into "heat sinks" and "heat sinks with fans", also called passive cooling and active cooling. The following uses graphics cards as an example.

Generally, some graphics cards with lower operating frequencies use passive cooling. This cooling method is to install a heat sink on the display chip, and no cooling fan is required. Because the graphics card with a lower operating frequency does not dissipate a lot of heat, it is not necessary to use a cooling fan. This ensures that the graphics card works stably while not only reducing production costs but also making no noise. The mute effect is naturally better than all active cooling The device is outstanding, but the passive cooling method will be far from active cooling. Although the joining of the heat pipe makes the cooling effect of the passive radiator further, it still cannot be compared with the active cooling. If it is a CPU, only the heat sink is used, and the airflow is usually pushed by the fan installed on the side;

Active cooling In addition to installing a heat sink on the display chip, a cooling fan is also installed. Graphics cards with higher operating frequencies require this type of active cooling. Because higher operating frequency will bring higher heat, it is difficult to meet the cooling needs of GPU and video memory by only installing a heat sink, so the help of fans is needed, and for those overclocked users and users who need long-term use Even more important.