CPU COOLER - Computer Heat Sinks

2024-07-24

Computer components are heavily utilized in integrated circuits. As we all know, high temperature is the enemy of integrated circuits. High temperatures will not only lead to unstable system operation, shorten the service life, and may even cause some components to burn out. The heat that causes high temperatures does not come from outside the computer, but inside the computer, or inside the integrated circuits. The role of the heat sink is to absorb this heat and then dissipate it inside or outside the chassis to ensure that the temperature of computer components is normal. Most heat sinks absorb heat by contacting the surface of the heat-generating components, then transfer the heat to a distant location, such as the air inside the chassis, through various methods, and then the chassis transfers this hot air to the outside of the chassis, completing the heat dissipation of the computer. There are very many types of coolers, CPU, graphics card, motherboard chipset, hard disk, chassis, power supply and even optical drive and memory will need a cooler, these different coolers can not be mixed, and one of the most commonly contacted is the Cpu Cooler.

Computer Heat Sink Material

The heatsink material refers to the specific material used for the heatsink. Each material has a different thermal conductivity, and in descending order of thermal conductivity, they are silver, copper, aluminum, and steel. However, silver would be too expensive to use as a heatsink, so the best option is to use copper. Although aluminum is much cheaper, it obviously does not conduct heat as well as copper (only about 50 percent of copper). Commonly used heatsink materials are copper and aluminum alloy, both have their own advantages and disadvantages. Copper's thermal conductivity is good, but more expensive, more difficult to process, too much weight (many pure copper heat sinks are more than the CPU's weight limit), less heat capacity, and easy to oxidize. Pure aluminum is too soft, can not be used directly, are the use of aluminum alloy in order to provide sufficient hardness, the advantages of aluminum alloy is inexpensive, lightweight, but the thermal conductivity than the copper to be much worse. Some radiators take the best of each, in the aluminum radiator base embedded in a copper plate. For the average user, the aluminum heatsink is already enough to meet the cooling needs.

Heat Dissipation Method

The heat sink is the main way in which the radiator emits heat. In thermodynamics, heat dissipation is heat transfer, and there are three main ways of transferring heat: heat conduction, heat convection and heat radiation. The transfer of energy by the substance itself or when the substance is in contact with the substance is called heat conduction, which is the most common type of heat transfer. For example, the way the base of the CPU heatsink is in direct contact with the CPU to take away heat is heat conduction. Thermal convection refers to the flow of fluids (gas or liquid) will be tropical heat away from the heat transfer method, in the computer chassis cooling system is more common in the cooling fan driven gas flow “forced convection” cooling method. Thermal radiation refers to rely on radiation to transfer heat, the most common daily is solar radiation. These three ways of heat dissipation are not isolated, in the daily heat transfer, these three ways of heat dissipation are occurring at the same time, working together.

In fact, any type of cooler basically uses all three methods of heat transfer at the same time, just with a different focus. For example, in an ordinary CPU air-cooled cooler, the CPU heatsink is in direct contact with the CPU surface, and the heat from the CPU surface is transferred to the CPU heatsink through heat conduction; the cooling fan generates airflow to take away the heat from the surface of the CPU heatsink through thermal convection; and the flow of the air inside the chassis takes away the heat from the air around the CPU heatsink through thermal convection until it reaches outside of the chassis; and at the same time, all of the parts with a high temperature will have a high effect on the surrounding parts with a low temperature. At the same time, all the parts with high temperature will radiate heat to the surrounding parts with low temperature.

The heat dissipation efficiency of a heat sink is related to the thermal conductivity of the heat sink material, the heat capacity of the heat sink material and the heat sink medium, and the effective heat dissipation area of the heat sink, among other parameters.

According to the way to take away heat from the radiator, the radiator can be divided into active and passive heat dissipation, the former is commonly air-cooled radiator, while the latter is commonly heat sink. Further breakdown of the cooling method, can be divided into air-cooled, heat pipe, liquid cooling, semiconductor cooling, compressor cooling and so on.

Air Cooled Heat Sinks COOLER

Air-cooled heat sinks are the most common and very simple, using a fan to carry away the heat absorbed by the radiator. It has the advantages of relatively low price and simple installation, but it is highly dependent on the environment, for example, when the temperature rises and overclocking, its cooling performance will be greatly affected.

Heat Pipe COOLER

Heat pipe is a kind of heat transfer element with very high thermal conductivity, it transfers heat through evaporation and condensation of liquid in the totally enclosed vacuum tube, it utilizes the fluid principle such as gross absorption, and plays a similar effect as refrigerator compressor refrigeration. It has a series of advantages such as very high thermal conductivity, good isothermal properties, heat transfer area on both sides of the hot and cold sides can be changed arbitrarily, heat transfer over long distances, temperature control, etc. Moreover, the heat exchanger composed of heat pipes has the advantages of high heat transfer efficiency, compact structure and small fluid resistance loss. Because of its special heat transfer characteristics, it can control the temperature of the tube wall to avoid dew point corrosion.

Liquid Cooling Radiator

Liquid cooling is the use of liquid in the pump driven forced circulation to take away the heat of the radiator, compared with the air-cooled has a quiet, stable cooling, small dependence on the environment and so on. However, the price of heat pipe and liquid cooling is relatively high, and the installation is relatively troublesome.