Active & Passive Cooling?

[stan92]

What is Active & Passive Cooling?

[stan92]

@marto thankyou very much

[hehehehhehehehe]

Active means theres some form of motor aiding the cooling process (waterpump, fans etc)

 

Passive means it's left all to the natural path of air, as in heat rises.

 

Active will always mean better cooling and smaller heatsinks to achieve the same results, but will also mean noise, where passive cooling is dead silent

And much hotter with no over clocks 

[stan92]

@hehehehhehehehe what do you mean?

[nightlitezzz]

Active means there is something actively cooling it. An example would be a CPU heat sink such as the stock Intel one. The fan is actively cooling the heat sink.

 

Passively means it relies on case airflow and there is nothing dedicated to cooling the heat sink. Something like the Prolimatech Megahalems or the Thermalright HR-02, when you can rely on airflow from your case to cool the heat sink. However this doesn't mean you can just install a passive heat sink and have no fans in your system,

 

Generally when something is actively cooled they will be cooler running than something that is passively cooled.