Heat sinks: Explained.

Introduction: 

    Modern electronics pack an incredible amount of complexity into a very small space which creates a lot of heat. If left unchecked, it could reduce your device's lifespan or even destroy outright the processor that created it. That's why when you first open up a PC or other electronic device, one of the first things you'll see is one or more large metal objects called heat sinks. 

Heat Sinks:

    Inside a PC, heat sinks will be found on the CPU, graphics card, motherboard, inside the power supply, and even in other places as needed. As you can see, they can look very different from each other. But they all serve the same basic purpose to remove heat from delicate components and extend their lifetimes. 

Kinds:

    Let's walk through some of the different kinds of heat sinks you might encounter. 

First up is the heat spreader. This is the most basic heat sink and it consists of a simple flat piece of metal. It only moderately improves heat dissipation because metal will transfer heat to the surrounding air faster than plastic. It would be much more effective if it also increased the size of the area of the surface that's being used to transfer that heat.

The next common type is passively pinned or finned heat sinks. These basic heat spreaders with structures on top of them that dramatically increase the surface area that can be used to dissipate heat to the surrounding air. They are much more effective than heat spreaders but they are also more expensive to make and they take up more space.

Speaking of taking up space, adding a fan to blow air directly adds a thinned or pinned heat sink which is relatively inexpensive and very space-efficient as a means of dramatically improving heat sink performance. For this reason, actively cooled thinned heat sinks are one of the most common types of heat sinks found in PC systems where size and cost are major design factors.

Speaking of the cost of the most effective and the most expensive, the common type of heat sink in a PC is a heat pipe or vapor chamber heat sink for very hot components like CPUs or graphics cards. The limiting factor of a standard Thin heat sink's performance is no longer the speed at which the fins can be used to dissipate heat to the air. But rather the speed at which the heat can be moved away from the very small processor core to the fins in the first place. Heat pipes and vapor chambers usually consist of an outer copper wall and material inside that is constantly changing phases between liquid and gas. They can be used to carry heat away from a small heat source extremely quickly to a large array of heat sink fins where it can be dissipated to the air. 

How to improve your heat sink?

An important question is that what can you do to improve your heat sink performance. Number one is to lower the ambient temperature. If cracking open a window lowers the room temperature by five degrees, it will lower your heat sink temperature by about five degrees.

Number two is more airflow, the faster the air moves over the heat sink. The better it will perform. 

Number three is a better thermal interface material. No two pieces of metal will ever meet up perfectly and thermal interface materials fill in these micro gaps for better heat conduction or better heat transfer between them. Replacing the subpar solutions that come pre-installed on your components with high-performance aftermarket thermal compounds can easily lower temperatures by several degrees.

Number four is mounting a good solid mount which improves the contact between a chip and a heat sink and ensures effective thermal transfer. A heat sink that isn't performing as expected is often held back by an air bubble trapped in between or a small component. Nearby that is interfering with the heat sinks mounting pressure. 

That's all.

Stay tuned.

Bye.