How it\'s made: heat sinks...

B

bitrex

Guest
I thought they were extruded, but no!

<https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM>

Like carving a turkey dinner
 
On Fri, 15 Apr 2022 18:58:13 -0400, bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:

I thought they were extruded, but no!

https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM

Like carving a turkey dinner

Most heat sinks are extruded. Some are cast, like pin fins.

Some are machined.

There\'s also a process where the fins are pressed into slots



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye
 
bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:
I thought they were extruded, but no!

https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM

Like carving a turkey dinner

Skiving is real slow. The only value is you get thinner fins than can be
extruded. More machining is needed if you want holes though any of that.
 
On Friday, April 15, 2022 at 6:58:20 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
I thought they were extruded, but no!

https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM

Like carving a turkey dinner

This gets you more fins for better transfer to the air. People focus on silly points like diamond heat sink grease, when they often lose far more performance at other points in the heat path. Ultimately there is a limit on how larger a heat sink you can attach to a CPU/GPU directly.

If size and cost are not an issue, heat pipes to connect the heat block on the CPU/GPU to a much larger thermal air interface. Bigger fins, bigger fan and much better performance.

Then water cooling can get even better performance, and the noisy bits can be somewhere else, even in another room. I remember discussing this with a guy who ran the tubes to a drum in his garage where he didn\'t even need to use an air interface. The thermal mass of the drum was good enough to absorb the heat for the time he ran the computer. Zero noise other than the power supply fan, I suppose he still had one of those.

--

Rick C.

- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
 
On Sat, 16 Apr 2022 19:51:56 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
<presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:
I thought they were extruded, but no!

https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM

Like carving a turkey dinner

Skiving is real slow. The only value is you get thinner fins than can be
extruded. More machining is needed if you want holes though any of that.

Those long skinny fins don\'t look efficient to me. And they would need
a huge air blast.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye
 
On Saturday, April 16, 2022 at 6:23:26 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 16 Apr 2022 19:51:56 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
pres...@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:
I thought they were extruded, but no!

https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM

Like carving a turkey dinner

Skiving is real slow. The only value is you get thinner fins than can be
extruded. More machining is needed if you want holes though any of that.
Those long skinny fins don\'t look efficient to me. And they would need
a huge air blast.

Does anyone know what he is talking about?

The large surface area of the long, skinny fins are perfect coupling between the low thermal resistance of the heat sink and the relatively high thermal conductivity of the fin/air contact. Lots of surface area gives a low thermal resistance at the point of contact. That\'s the point of using them.

It\'s the extruded heat sinks with much fewer fins and a lot less surface area, that require a lot more air flow to get the same thermal conductivity.

--

Rick C.

+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209
 
TRicky Dickhead wrote:

======================
Those long skinny fins don\'t look efficient to me. And they would need
a huge air blast.

Does anyone know what he is talking about?

** Think so.

The large surface area of the long, skinny fins are perfect coupling between
the low thermal resistance of the heat sink and the relatively high thermal conductivity
of the fin/air contact.

** How well does heat travel via a thin plate?

It\'s the extruded heat sinks with much fewer fins and a lot less surface area,
that require a lot more air flow to get the same thermal conductivity.

** The scived idea relies on having very many fins.
Fewer but thicker ones, spaced widely, works just as well or better.

Also:

Scived heatsinks suffer the disadvantage of being limited to internal use.
Extruded and cast ones are often structural parts of a case.

Horses for courses....


...... Phil
 
On Sunday, April 17, 2022 at 10:10:35 AM UTC+10, Ricky wrote:
On Saturday, April 16, 2022 at 6:23:26 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 16 Apr 2022 19:51:56 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
pres...@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:
I thought they were extruded, but no!

https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM

Like carving a turkey dinner

Skiving is real slow. The only value is you get thinner fins than can be
extruded. More machining is needed if you want holes though any of that.

Those long skinny fins don\'t look efficient to me. And they would need
a huge air blast.

Does anyone know what he is talking about?

The large surface area of the long, skinny fins are perfect coupling between the low thermal resistance of the heat sink and the relatively high thermal conductivity of the fin/air contact. Lots of surface area gives a low thermal resistance at the point of contact. That\'s the point of using them.

It\'s the extruded heat sinks with much fewer fins and a lot less surface area, that require a lot more air flow to get the same thermal conductivity..

The question hangs on how much heat you have to get rid of.

The heat capacity of air is well defined. If you need to move a lot of heat you have to heat up a lot of air and move it away as soon as it has got hot.

Fewer fins with lots of space between them let you blast a lot more air past them than you can squeeze between the thin fins of a skived heat sink.
If you don\'t need to get rid of as much heat, a slower air flow will serve, and you can get away with a less voluminous heat sink

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
 
On 2022-04-17 00:23, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 16 Apr 2022 19:51:56 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:
I thought they were extruded, but no!

https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM

Like carving a turkey dinner

Skiving is real slow. The only value is you get thinner fins than can be
extruded. More machining is needed if you want holes though any of that.

Those long skinny fins don\'t look efficient to me. And they would need
a huge air blast.

I don\'t think so: a strong air blast would bend the fins.


--
Cheers, Carlos.
 
On Sat, 16 Apr 2022 18:22:46 -0700 (PDT), Phil Allison
<pallison49@gmail.com> wrote:

TRicky Dickhead wrote:

======================

Those long skinny fins don\'t look efficient to me. And they would need
a huge air blast.

Does anyone know what he is talking about?


** Think so.

The large surface area of the long, skinny fins are perfect coupling between
the low thermal resistance of the heat sink and the relatively high thermal conductivity
of the fin/air contact.

** How well does heat travel via a thin plate?

The sheet thermal resistance of a thin plate can be high, especially
aluminum alloys that skive well.

If you blow air at a thin, tall, dense array of fins, it will
naturally prefer to go around, not through, the fins. And you\'ll get
most of the air flow at the tips of the fins, not near the baseplate,
so the thermal resistances hurt. Short skived copper fins are good if
the air is really blasted into the fins from above, like in a CPU
cooler.

I\'ve measured a lot of this stuff lately. That trumps theories.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0kszc4nltr1q8d3/P944_HS_2.jpg?raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/iwkbuuoa4iq33a7/Mock1.jpg?raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bz6ueadispq6ril/CPU_Cooler_Washers.jpg?raw=1




--

I yam what I yam - Popeye
 
On Sun, 17 Apr 2022 12:31:52 +0200, \"Carlos E.R.\"
<robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

On 2022-04-17 00:23, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 16 Apr 2022 19:51:56 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:

bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:
I thought they were extruded, but no!

https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM

Like carving a turkey dinner

Skiving is real slow. The only value is you get thinner fins than can be
extruded. More machining is needed if you want holes though any of that.

Those long skinny fins don\'t look efficient to me. And they would need
a huge air blast.

I don\'t think so: a strong air blast would bend the fins.

That strong would destroy the enclosure and kill bystanders.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye
 
On Monday, April 18, 2022 at 12:48:36 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sat, 16 Apr 2022 18:22:46 -0700 (PDT), Phil Allison
palli...@gmail.com> wrote:
Rick C wrote:

Those long skinny fins don\'t look efficient to me. And they would need
a huge air blast.

Does anyone know what he is talking about?

** Think so.

The large surface area of the long, skinny fins are perfect coupling between
the low thermal resistance of the heat sink and the relatively high thermal conductivity
of the fin/air contact.

** How well does heat travel via a thin plate?

More easily than through a thin layer of air - roughly a thousand times faster.

> The sheet thermal resistance of a thin plate can be high, especially aluminum alloys that skive well.

But nowhere near as high as air.

If you blow air at a thin, tall, dense array of fins, it will
naturally prefer to go around, not through, the fins. And you\'ll get
most of the air flow at the tips of the fins, not near the baseplate,
so the thermal resistances hurt.

If you have a lot of heat to shift, you need a lot of air flow. If you aren\'t shifting all that much heat, you don\'t need as much airflow.

> Short skived copper fins are good if the air is really blasted into the fins from above, like in a CPU cooler.

If that\'s the kind of heat dissipation you need to deal with.

> I\'ve measured a lot of this stuff lately. That trumps theories.

Only if you understand what you are doing, and why you are doing it. If you don\'t, it is design by mindless evolution, which is time consuming.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0kszc4nltr1q8d3/P944_HS_2.jpg?raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/iwkbuuoa4iq33a7/Mock1.jpg?raw=1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bz6ueadispq6ril/CPU_Cooler_Washers.jpg?raw=1

Not a lot of information there. More preening than informing the audience.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
 
Cydrome Leader <presence@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote in
news:t3f6os$9d4$1@reader1.panix.com:

bitrex <user@example.net> wrote:
I thought they were extruded, but no!

https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM

Like carving a turkey dinner

Skiving is real slow. The only value is you get thinner fins than
can be extruded. More machining is needed if you want holes though
any of that.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7qVpWu2QYs>
Funny it looks like the same damn machine.
 
Ricky <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
news:87e310b7-17aa-4feb-9032-c2104f7d2fdcn@googlegroups.com:

On Friday, April 15, 2022 at 6:58:20 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
I thought they were extruded, but no!

https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM

Like carving a turkey dinner

This gets you more fins for better transfer to the air.

But at that close spacing, due to boundary layer effects, it would
have to be strongly forced air. or it would simply \"walk over top
of\" the whole thing, doing less work in the end.

People
focus on silly points like diamond heat sink grease,

All that is needed is intimate, coplanar contact. The grease takes
up voids. What *should be* \"micro-sized voids\", but voides
nonetheless... errr without it the heat tranfer IS less. Those
voids contain the insulative gas \"air\".

when they
often lose far more performance at other points in the heat path.

The first series of AMD dual core CPUs back in oh... 1998 or so
would fry the CPU AND the motherbaord almost instantly if the heat
sink was not well coupled, and that included void filling paste.

Ultimately there is a limit on how larger a heat sink you can
attach to a CPU/GPU directly.

That is why contained flowing water was the choice for a long time.

I always wanted to make an entire PC immersed in dielectric fluid
<https://econtroldevices.com/shop/3m-fc-40-fluorinert-electronic-
liquid-20kg/>

But it too has to be moving to carry the heat away.

If size and cost are not an issue, heat pipes to connect the heat
block on the CPU/GPU to a much larger thermal air interface.
Bigger fins, bigger fan and much better performance.

Still water is better.
Then water cooling can get even better performance,

Oh... I see you are aware.

and the noisy
bits can be somewhere else, even in another room. I remember
discussing this with a guy who ran the tubes to a drum in his
garage where he didn\'t even need to use an air interface. The
thermal mass of the drum was good enough to absorb the heat for
the time he ran the computer. Zero noise other than the power
supply fan, I suppose he still had one of those.
 
Ricky <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
news:3f3e0e0f-175e-4d27-be95-401418cc7e54n@googlegroups.com:

The large surface area of the long, skinny fins are perfect
coupling between the low thermal resistance of the heat sink and
the relatively high thermal conductivity of the fin/air contact.

The word(s) for today is \"boundary layer\".

<https://www.heatsinkcalculator.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2016/05/effect_of_boundary_laher_thickness.png>

<https://www.heatsinkcalculator.com/blog/top-3-mistakes-made-when-
selecting-a-heat-sink/>

Slow air would pass right over a close fin spaced sink. High speed
forced air is required when the fins get that closely spaced.

It is not only about their condution from the heat source, it is
about how well it gets transferred to a MOVING air mass. That is why
most heats sinks had wadire fin spacing.
 
\"Carlos E.R.\" <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote in news:eek:t6tii-7un.ln1
@Telcontar.valinor:

I don\'t think so: a strong air blast would bend the fins.

Silly.

A strong air blast must have blown the only two firing neurons you
have between your ears to a new location.
 
On Sun, 17 Apr 2022 15:55:21 -0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:

Ricky <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
news:3f3e0e0f-175e-4d27-be95-401418cc7e54n@googlegroups.com:

The large surface area of the long, skinny fins are perfect
coupling between the low thermal resistance of the heat sink and
the relatively high thermal conductivity of the fin/air contact.

The word(s) for today is \"boundary layer\".

https://www.heatsinkcalculator.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2016/05/effect_of_boundary_laher_thickness.png

https://www.heatsinkcalculator.com/blog/top-3-mistakes-made-when-
selecting-a-heat-sink/

Slow air would pass right over a close fin spaced sink. High speed
forced air is required when the fins get that closely spaced.

Right. Viscous drag will keep air from flowing between tall, closely
spaced fins. It will have to be ducted and forced, or it will go
around.

The limiting case, more and more denser and thinner fins, volumetric
air flow will approach zero.

My general rule is that a heat sink should reduce the native air flow
by about half. Neither zero nor 100% does any cooling.





--

I yam what I yam - Popeye
 
On Sun, 17 Apr 2022 09:10:41 -0700, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

On Sun, 17 Apr 2022 15:55:21 -0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinuxUserNumeroUno@decadence.org wrote:

Ricky <gnuarm.deletethisbit@gmail.com> wrote in
news:3f3e0e0f-175e-4d27-be95-401418cc7e54n@googlegroups.com:

The large surface area of the long, skinny fins are perfect
coupling between the low thermal resistance of the heat sink and
the relatively high thermal conductivity of the fin/air contact.

The word(s) for today is \"boundary layer\".

https://www.heatsinkcalculator.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2016/05/effect_of_boundary_laher_thickness.png

https://www.heatsinkcalculator.com/blog/top-3-mistakes-made-when-
selecting-a-heat-sink/

Slow air would pass right over a close fin spaced sink. High speed
forced air is required when the fins get that closely spaced.


Right. Viscous drag will keep air from flowing between tall, closely
spaced fins. It will have to be ducted and forced, or it will go
around.

The limiting case, more and more denser and thinner fins, volumetric
air flow will approach zero.

My general rule is that a heat sink should reduce the native air flow
by about half. Neither zero nor 100% does any cooling.

And of course, the tips of tall thin fins have a high thermal
resistance to the baseplate, so run at about inlet air temp, so
restrict air flow without contributing much coolong. My 50% number is
useless if the air flow is restricted without corresponding cooling.

There is no limit to how bad a heat sink you can design. A solid
aluminum brick is pretty bad.



--

I yam what I yam - Popeye
 
On Monday, April 18, 2022 at 1:49:49 AM UTC+10, DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:
Ricky <gnuarm.del...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:87e310b7-17aa-4feb...@googlegroups.com:
On Friday, April 15, 2022 at 6:58:20 PM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
I thought they were extruded, but no!

https://youtu.be/wwWIyHo3yJM

Like carving a turkey dinner

This gets you more fins for better transfer to the air.
But at that close spacing, due to boundary layer effects, it would
have to be strongly forced air. or it would simply \"walk over top
of\" the whole thing, doing less work in the end.
People
focus on silly points like diamond heat sink grease,
All that is needed is intimate, coplanar contact. The grease takes
up voids. What *should be* \"micro-sized voids\", but voides
nonetheless... errr without it the heat tranfer IS less. Those
voids contain the insulative gas \"air\".
when they
often lose far more performance at other points in the heat path.
The first series of AMD dual core CPUs back in oh... 1998 or so
would fry the CPU AND the motherbaord almost instantly if the heat
sink was not well coupled, and that included void filling paste.
Ultimately there is a limit on how larger a heat sink you can
attach to a CPU/GPU directly.
That is why contained flowing water was the choice for a long time.

I always wanted to make an entire PC immersed in dielectric fluid
https://econtroldevices.com/shop/3m-fc-40-fluorinert-electronic-
liquid-20kg/

But it too has to be moving to carry the heat away.

That\'s where heat pipes are nice.

What moves in heat sink is just water vapour. The water gets wicked along to the area that needs cooling, then evaporates - rapidly, because there\'s only water vapour inside the heat pipe, and the vapour pressure in side the heatpipe is that of the water at the point where it is condensing, plus the pressure drop to move it along to the point where it does condense.

It really whistles through the heat pie on the way to the condensing end, and water vapour carries a lot more heat per gram that a noncondensable gas - the latent heat of evaporation of water is 2256 kiloJoules per kilogram. A kilogram of water is a lot of water - about 1250 litres of water vapour at atmospheric pressure.

Even one gram of water is a 1.25 litres of water vapour, and the pipe work on an ordinary heat sink would be more like 0.1 litres, and you might get a tenth of an atmosphere pressure inside, so you might have 10 milligrams of water on the move, so about 22 joules. But if that got from one end of the pipe to the other in one second that would 22 watts. It seems to move faster than that

> > If size and cost are not an issue, heat pipes to connect the heat block on the CPU/GPU to a much larger thermal air interface.

The heat pipe isn\'t bulky. The dissipating fins at the condensing end usually are pretty bulky. You are still dumping the heat into air, after all.

Bigger fins, bigger fan and much better performance.

Still water is better.

Only if you can get it to evaporate. Liquid water as a heat transfer medium is okay, if you can dump the warm water down the sink - and I have done that for a research set-up - but it isn\'t practical for long term use.

Then water cooling can get even better performance,

Oh... I see you are aware.

and the noisy
bits can be somewhere else, even in another room. I remember
discussing this with a guy who ran the tubes to a drum in his
garage where he didn\'t even need to use an air interface. The
thermal mass of the drum was good enough to absorb the heat for
the time he ran the computer. Zero noise other than the power
supply fan, I suppose he still had one of those.

Not necessarily. Make the power supply physically big, and reasonably efficient, and free convection would work.

Our 1996 millidegree thermostat started off with circulating water, but it got airlocks in the water pipes after about six months, which needed a visit from our service man to fix. So the production manager switched it to a heat pipe, after I\'d moved to the Netherlands (in 1993) but before I\'d written up the job, so it\'s covered in the paper I wrote, which didn\'t get published until 1996.

It got his name (Douglas Stewart) onto the list of authors. The heat pipe setup was a custom part, and a pain to get designed and made but well worth the effort. I wished I\'d thought of it.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
 
On Monday, April 18, 2022 at 2:10:52 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Sun, 17 Apr 2022 15:55:21 -0000 (UTC),
DecadentLinux...@decadence.org wrote:

Ricky <gnuarm.del...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:3f3e0e0f-175e-4d27...@googlegroups.com:

The large surface area of the long, skinny fins are perfect
coupling between the low thermal resistance of the heat sink and
the relatively high thermal conductivity of the fin/air contact.

The word(s) for today is \"boundary layer\".

https://www.heatsinkcalculator.com/blog/wp-
content/uploads/2016/05/effect_of_boundary_laher_thickness.png

https://www.heatsinkcalculator.com/blog/top-3-mistakes-made-when-
selecting-a-heat-sink/

Slow air would pass right over a close fin spaced sink. High speed
forced air is required when the fins get that closely spaced.

Not exactly. true. Slow air would mostly bypass the gap between the fins but any pressure gradient along the length of the fins will move some air. If you haven\'t got much heat to dissipate, you don\'t need to move much air to carry it away.

> Right. Viscous drag will keep air from flowing between tall, closely spaced fins.

It won\'t stop it flowing, but it won\'t flow fast in the narrow gap.

> It will have to be ducted and forced, or it will go around.

Most of it will.

The limiting case, more and more denser and thinner fins, volumetric
air flow will approach zero.

But it won\'t get there.

My general rule is that a heat sink should reduce the native air flow
by about half. Neither zero nor 100% does any cooling.

But there\'s nothing magical about getting exactly 50%.

If you don\'t have to move much heat, a skived heat sink and slow moving air might be the way to go.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney
 

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