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Modern electronics pack an incredible amount of complexity into a very small

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space which creates a lot of heat. Heat that if left unchecked could reduce the

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lifespan or even destroy outright the

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processor that created it. That's why when you first open up a PC or other

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electronic device, one of the first things you'll see is one or more large

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metal objects called heat sinks. Inside a PC, heat sinks will be found on the

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CPU, graphics card, motherboard, inside the power supply, and even in other

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places as needed. As you can see, they can look very different from each other,

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but they all serve the same basic purpose, to remove heat from delicate

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components and extend their lifetimes. Let's walk through some of the different

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kinds of heat sinks you might encounter. First up is the heat spreader. This is

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the most basic heat sink, and it consists of a simple flat piece of

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metal. It only moderately improves heat dissipation. Because while metal will

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transfer heat to the surrounding air faster than plastic, it would be much

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more effective if it also increased the size of the area of the surface that's

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being used to transfer that heat. That leads us to our next common type,

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passive pinned or finned heat sinks. These are basically heat spreaders with

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structures on top of them that dramatically increase the surface area

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that can be used to dissipate heat to the surrounding air. They are much more

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effective than heat spreaders, but they are also more expensive to make and they

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take up more space. Speaking of taking up space, adding a fan to blow air

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directly at a thinned or pinned heat sink is relatively inexpensive and very

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space efficient as a means of dramatically improving heatsink

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performance. For this reason, actively cooled thinned heat sinks are one of the

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most common types of heat sinks found in PC systems where size and cost are major

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design factors. Speaking of cost, the most effective and the most expensive

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common type of heat sink in a PC is a heat pipe or vapor chamber heatsink. For

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very hot components like CPUs or graphics cards, the limiting factor of a

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standard thinned heat sink's performance is no longer the speed at which the fins

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can be used to dissipate heat to the air, but rather the speed at which the

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heat can be moved away from the very small processor core to the fins in the

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first place. Heat pipes and vapor chambers usually consist of an outer

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copper wall and a material inside that is constantly changing phases between

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liquid and gas. They can be used to carry heat away from a small heat source

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extremely quickly to a large array of heatsink fins where it can be dissipated

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to the air. So far, I've talked mostly about surface area and how that helps,

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but there are other factors that affect heatsink performance. For example,

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copper performs better than aluminum as a heatsink material. And among aluminum

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alloys, some of them are better than others. But the material selection, like

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many of these other factors, cannot be controlled by anyone other than the

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manufacturer. So might not be that useful to you. But what can you do to

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improve your heatsink's performance? Number one is to lower the ambient

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temperature. If cracking open a window lowers the room temperature by 5°, it

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will lower your heat sink temperature by about 5°. Number two is more air flow.

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The faster the air moves over the heatsink, the better it will perform.

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Number three is better thermal interface material. No two pieces of metal will

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ever meet up perfectly, and thermal interface materials fill in these micro

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gaps for better heat conduction or better heat transfer between them.

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Replacing the subpar solutions that come pre-installed on your components with

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high performance aftermarket thermal compound can easily lower temperatures

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by several degrees or more. Number four is mounting. A good solid mount improves

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the contact between a chip and a heatsink and ensures effective thermal

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transfer. Often a heatsink that isn't performing as expected is being held

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back by an air bubble trapped in between or a small component nearby that is

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interfering with the heatsink's mounting pressure. Speaking of mounting pressure,

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fast as possible on heat sinks. Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you

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disliked it. Leave a comment and let me know if you learned something. And maybe

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