Heat rejection limits of air cooled plane fin heat sinks for computer cooling

Abstract

Current desktop computers typically use fan-heat sinks for cooling the CPU, referred to as active heat sinks. This work seeks to determine the heat rejection limits for such fan-heat sinks, within specific fan and heat sink space limits. A fixed volume, 80 60 50 mm is chosen as the limiting dimensions, which includes the fan volume. The present work addresses plane fin heat sinks, on which a typical 60 mm fan is mounted. Both duct flow and impinging flow are considered. Analytically based models are used to predict the optimum geometry (minimum convection resistance) for plane fins with duct and impinging flow configurations. Also assessed are the effects of increased fan speed (up to 25%) and heat sink base size (33% increase) on air-cooling limits in duct and impinging flow. Tests on fan-heat sinks are done to validate the predictions. Optimization is also done for an enhanced (offset-strip) fin geometry in duct flow. The plane fin is found to outperform the enhanced geometry.

Comparison of Fluid Flow and Thermal Characteristics of Plate-Fin and Pin-Fin Heat Sinks Subject to a Parallel Flow

“…However, because their solutions are obtained under the assumption of fully developed flow, the application of their solutions is limited to the fully developed laminar flow condition. On the other hand, Saini and Webb [9] performed a thermal analysis of developing laminar flow in rectangular channels. Because their study is aimed at computer cooling with short-length heat sinks, they accounted for developing flow characteristics only in their study.…”

Temperature-Aware Design and Management for 3D Multi-Core Architectures

“…A typical example in active cooling techniques is injected air cooling [86]. Forced air cooling injects air at different volumetric flow rates through the mounted heat sink to augment the convective heat transfer between the hot plate and the surrounding environment.…”

Combined heat and power generation via hybrid data center cooling‐polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell system

“…9 However, due to the low heat removal capacity of the air (37 W/cm 2 ), the air-cooled DC systems cannot be energy efficient and economically feasible for the rapidly developed ICT technologies, which have high heat flux; hence, the liquid-cooling DC methods have been being popular thanks to their high heat removal capacities (100 W/cm 2 ) in order to provide affordable and energy-efficient DC cooling operations. 8,10 Another advantage of the liquidcooling DC systems is becoming independent from the ambient air conditions, namely, the changes in air temperature and relative humidity do not affect the system performance as remarkable as the air-cooled DC systems. Among the other liquid-cooling DC system types, the direct cooling systems are able to be customized according to the DC unit specifications and they can provide more satisfying temperature uniformity.…”