Back in the 386 days, if you had cooling facilities for your processor people would have thought you were nuts. Today though, cooling is a very important issue. There are several ways to cool the processor, and I will try to discuss each of them here.

With the 386 processor, there wasn't a need for a special cooling system. The chip was slow and did not have many transistors, therefore the air flow from the power supply was enough to cool the chip. With the release of the 486, cooling became an issue. With the slower 486s, it wasn't a really big deal, but with the 486DX-66, cooling was an issue. This clock doubled chip got pretty hot. From then on, chips ran faster and hotter. All chips used today require a special cooling system. How much cooling depends on the processor, the case, and the type of cooling system you are using.

The type of processor is the biggest variable in the amount and type of cooling needed. For example, the Cyrix 6x86 is a nice Pentium alternative, but runs much hotter than the Pentium. Run-of-the-mill fans could not keep it cool enough, so Cyrix had to design a special heat sink and fan to keep the chip cool.

A processor that is not cooled enough will show some strange errors. Every processor has a safe range of temperatures that it can handle. Once the temperature gets above that point, one will usually see random error messages. Many times, one will not suspect that cooling is the problem because the error will seem to be coming from another part. Common errors are system crashes, lockups, and surprise reboots. It can also have program errors and memory errors along with many other things.

Most cooling hardware is designed for the AT case. The AT design is very poor when processor cooling is concerned. An independent cooling system is required. In the AT design, the processor is far away from the power supply. Also the fan blows out of the system instead of in, so there is not much of an air flow inside the case.

With the ATX design, the processor was placed near a power supply that blows air directly over the chip. This, for the most part, eliminates the need for a CPU fan. However, it's a a matter of comfort. If you don't feel like it provides enough air, you may want a CPU fan to help. For most cases, though, a passive heat sink is enough.

There are alarms that can be installed in a system to let you know if anything overheats or if the CPU fan fails. If it anything goes wrong, it beeps, or buzzes. One such solution is the FireAlarm. For info, check out http://www.gsconline.com.