Cooling your computer, PC Cooling with extra fans
It is essential with modern computers that the hot air produced from the components is circulated so that it does not build up and result in overheating and burning out or causing it to lead to early failure by being overstressed.
For example the die on top of the processor gives out a great number of watts in a very concentrated area. To cool this you always need a thin layer of thermal paste and a heat sink and rated fan to draw the hot air away from the processor and other system components.
To cool something down you either need to apply a fan to circulate air or in a car engine it is cooled by water pipes with coolant being pumped around the engine, a cooling fan at the front drawing cooler air in to cool the hot air from around the engine.
Using Air to cool a PC is the most popular method as it is a cheap and reliable method.
Along with the CPU coolers case fans are used extensively inside the PC housing, to ensure sufficient airflow through out the case often one fan is placed at the front of the case to draw air inside with another fan at the rear or higher up set to turn to other way to move warm air to the outside of the case.
Additional fans are often used near the hard drives as these also run very hot now with increasing speeds. You may also notice that on your motherboard you have a number of chips namely the chipset chips, as with all devices they are using power to work and a consequence is the warm air which is given off some vendors are including smaller fans which are fixed on-top of the chipsets or bridges to ensure they are cooled sufficiently.
