We've sort of beat this subject to death, but I think what we are
looking for is a material that will quickly move the heat away from the
source (processor chip) and then quickly give it up to the air. My gut
feeling is that copper "holds" heat. whereas steel tends to give it up.
I used to build custom marine refrigeration systems and it seems to me
that when you solder a copper tube, the heat stays with it longer,
whereas with steel the heat doesn't travel the tube as much. It tends
to stay at the heat source and then cool down more quickly once the
flame is removed. It may have been said before, but the idea behind
fins is that they greatly increase the surface area and thus give up
more heat to the air. Actually fans always improve cooling. The issue
Wayne has is that he wants to eliminate the fan noise. Perhaps another
approach would be to continue with a fan in a case with good ducting but
concentrate on the noise reduction of the fans. It could be that these
fans have resonate frequencies that are sympathetic with the case so
it's possible that some sound deadening material applied to the outside
of the case could greatly improve the situation.
MonMotha wrote:
The characteristic you're looking to minimize is Thermal Resistance.
I'm no thermo expert though so possibly do some googling on what that
is exactly.
Copper will tend to suck the heat away faster and then the objective
of the "fins" is to maximize contact between the copper and the air
(much larger surface area than cpu core alone) to improve conduction
between air and copper as the copper to copper conduction will occur
readily to transfer the heat from the area of the CPU core up to the
fins.
--MonMotha
