I am a little confused with the terminology with what's a passive and active heat sink.
First of all I want to know where the motherboard comes with this heat sink pre-installed as shown in the following picture?
if, yes, then it is already a passive heat sink which doesn't require you to install anything?
In some cases as here shown in the following:
Am I seeing a fan mounted over the passive heat sink or is it something different altogether called active heat sink? Why is the fan necessary if it is already a passive heat sink? Would you call the last one active-passive heat sink?
1 Answer
I think you may be over-thinking it.
A passive heat sink is one with no moving parts. An active heat sink has moving parts. thus the second image is an active heat sink.
The fan is necessary because the volume of heat is to much to dissipate without forcing air through it. (If you think about it, there would be little point in bolting a fan directly onto a cpu as there would be no way for the air to flow through it - thus any active heat sink must have passive parts)
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