Motherboards are generally air cooled with heat sinks often mounted on larger chips in modern motherboards. Insufficient or improper cooling can cause damage to the internal components of the computer, or cause it to crash. Passive cooling, or a single fan mounted on the power supply, was sufficient for many desktop computer CPU's until the late 1990s; since then, most have required CPU fans mounted on heat sinks, due to rising clock speeds and power consumption. Most motherboards have connectors for additional computer fans and integrated temperature sensors to detect motherboard and CPU temperatures and controllable fan connectors which the BIOS or operating system can use to regulate fan speed. Alternatively computers can use a water cooling system instead of many fans.
Motherboards are generally air cooled with heat sinks often mounted on larger chips in modern motherboards. Insufficient or improper cooling can cause damage to the internal components of the computer, or cause it to crash Passive cooling, or a single fan mounted on the power supply was sufficient for many desktop computer CPU's until the late 1990s; since then, most have required CPU fans mounted on heat sinks, due to rising clock speeds and power consumption. Most motherboards have connectors for additional computer fans and integrated temperature sensors to detect motherboard and CPU temperatures and controllable fan connectors which the BIOS or operating system can use to regulate fan speed. Alternatively computers can use a water cooling system instead of many fans.