A component designed to lower the temperature of an electronic device by dissipating heat into the surrounding air. All modern CPUs require a Cooler. Some also require a fan. A Cooler without a fan is called a passive Cooler; a Cooler with a fan is called an active Cooler. Cooler are generally made of an aluminum alloy and often have fins.

A CPU is prone to overheating because some of its parts generate heat. Without a Cooler, the heat energy generated by the parts will stay in your CPU, which will burn or blow it up.

Since most computer parts are made of electronic chips, they absorb heat easily. If they receive too much thermal energy, they can be damaged and thus fail, posing a risk to the functionality of high-performance computers.

Having a cooler is very important as it helps cool your CPU. It’s designed to absorb heat from your CPU and dissipate it away from other components. Because the heat sink has fins, this provides more surface area for heat transfer.
The heat sink needs to be in close contact with the heat source for maximum cooling. Heat sinks use thermal conductors to transfer heat energy to fins, which have a larger surface area to spread heat energy throughout the computer.

Cooler move heat away from CPU parts in four basic steps:

1. Heat Source Generates Heat: The source is any system that generates heat and needs to remove it to operate.
2. Heat energy is transferred from the source: Because the heat sink uses high thermal conductivity materials such as copper and aluminum, heat energy can be naturally conducted into the heat sink through its material and away from the source.
3. Thermal energy is distributed throughout the heat sink: Thermal energy is distributed throughout the heat sink by natural conduction, moving on a thermal gradient from a high temperature environment to a low temperature environment. This means that the radiator will generally be hotter near the source and cooler near the end of the radiator.
4. Heat energy is removed from the heat sink: This process relies on the temperature gradient of the heat sink and its operating fluid—most commonly air or a non-conductive liquid.

The working fluid flows over the warm radiator surface, using thermal diffusion and convection to transfer thermal energy from the surface to the surrounding environment.
This relies on a temperature gradient so that convection and subsequent heat dissipation cannot occur if the surrounding temperature is not lower than the heat sink.
A heat sink with a larger total surface area is more efficient because a large surface area provides more room for heat dissipation and convection.

There are three types of Cooler: passive, active, and hybrid.

Passive Cooler

Passive Cooler rely on natural convection, which means that the ability of hot air to float causes an airflow over the radiator, and they don’t require auxiliary power or control systems to dissipate the heat. But passive heatsinks are not as effective at removing heat from the system as active heatsinks.

Active Cooler

Active Cooler use forced air—usually created by a fan, blower, or even the motion of the entire object—to increase fluid flow in hot areas.
It’s like your PC’s fan that turns on after it gets hot. The fan forces air across the radiator, allowing more unheated air to pass across the radiator surface. Increases the overall thermal gradient across the heatsink, allowing more thermal energy to dissipate.

Hybrid Cooler

Hybrid Cooler combine the properties of passive and active radiators. These configurations are less common and typically use a control system to cool the system based on temperature demand.
When the system is running at lower levels, the forced air system is inactive and only passively cools the CPU. Once the system improves operating performance and reaches higher temperatures, the active cooling mechanism kicks in to increase the cooling capacity of the radiator.

Thermal compound – also known as thermal paste, thermal compound, CPU grease, thermal paste, heatsink paste, and thermal interface material, is a viscous paste that is used as an interface between a CPU heatsink and a heat source.

Thermal Compound can be used for up to 2 years once opened. The paste can be stored at normal room temperature, but avoiding places that tend to get hot is recommended, else it would dry more quickly.

Thermal pastes have a specified usage time (on the CPU) of up to 5 years. However, you will most likely see excellent results for much longer than that, so we simply recommend checking the temperatures occasionally after passing the 5-year mark. Unless you see a clear increase in delta temperatures (difference between CPU temperature and ambient temperature, compared at 100% CPU load) there is no need to replace the paste.

Dynatron CPU coolers are shipped with a plastic protection cover at the bottom side of the cooler, which protects the contact surface against scratches and other damage. The plastic protection cover is clearly visible and there is no plastic film underneath.

As it is not possible to reliably calculate or control the forces that act upon a system during transport (e.g. in shipping), we generally recommend, for safety reasons, taking off coolers with a total weight of more than 700g (incl. fan). Dynatron cannot be held responsible for any damage that may arise due to excessive stress during transport if you keep the heatsink installed.

Please verify that you have installed the fastening brackets correctly:

Please proceed to our installation manuals, if you need more detailed instructions on how to install your Dynatron CPU cooler onto your motherboard.

Internal testing at Dynatron has shown that many PC cases are rather restrictive when it comes to air intake and exhaust due to dampening materials, doors, covers or a rather closed design approach in general. Increasing the number of system fans can help to a certain degree, but will not provide much improvement if intakes and outlets are too resistive. The best cooling results are to be expected from cases which use a rather open approach (e.g. mesh walls and intakes). Unfortunately, Dynatron cannot provide detailed recommendations for individual system configurations, as there are too many options and variables available to give general recommendations. Please refer to various general case cooling guidelines for information on how to set up the airflow inside your case.