Everybody always talks about the massive computing power of smartphones (movies love the moon mission comparison) but still my phone rarely gets hot. (Only when I use it while charging sometimes)
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Electronics, particular integrated circuits like CPUs, produce heat. Dealing with heat is a big part of designing hardware – one of the many ways to combat heat is to use the right components, in the right way to lower the heat produced.
There’s passive heat sinks where no moving fans etc are needed – they often require some airflow meaning the case has to allow air to enter so the heat-sink can get rid of the heat. With some smart phones, the case is actually the heat-sink.
If the component produces more heat than a passive cooling can handle (or the passive element would have to be very large) active cooling like fans or water cooling is needed. You will have different things in your computer needing different levels of cooling – so finding a single solution for all of it isn’t always easy.
Quite a lot of computers, particular those you may not think of as a computer like your smart-watch, cell phone or even TV, uses passive cooling. There’s a ton of SBC (Single Board Computing) that also works perfectly fine with passive cooling – ie. no fans. Characteristics of those kind of computers is that they’re not designed for speed, but for efficiency and hence low heat generation. For one, running a fan on a battery wears the battery out in no time – but generally less heat means smaller components and smaller products.
Which brings you to your gaming computer or data center computer, where power/max-performance is important. In many cases they may even be “over clocked” producing even more heat than they were designed for. Very effective cooling is required or they will burn/melt in no time and losing a $1000+ computer in a few minutes due to overheating is not exactly fun (or cheap).
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