Any Thermaldynamic Engineers out there?

[Dogmeat]

Is it better to have a thin or thick base plate in contact with the CPU core to transfer the heat to the fin surface areas for disapation?

My thoughts, which are limited, lead me to believe that a thicker base plate will transfer the heat more evenly to the fins but also will hold more heat in the CPU. A thinner base would be less efficient in transfering the heat to the fins but would run cooler at the CPU as the base plate would take advantage of the cooling fans also.

Anyone know which is best?

 

[Fingers]

I'm no engineer, but i'm studying to be one. In' my personal opinion, I don't think either thickness will hold more heat to the CPU, but a thinner bass would have the advantage of being quicker to dissipate because it has less of a distance to go before it reaches the fins. Plus it will take up less room in your case and since there will be less material there, most likely depending on brand they will be cheaper. I would just go for the one with the biggest fins and the highest fan output that you can handle

I hope this helps

 

[Fingers]

Oh yeah and before i forget make sure you get some thermal grease. It will help with the heat transfer, and be carfull not to use too much as too much will make you CPU hotter. A pea size drop is plenty

 

[tweakr]

Hi there

Limited knowledge of thermaldynamics, but I believe a thicker base provides more "heat storage", that is allows the heatsink to absorb more heat, even if heat has not yet reached the fins for dissipation (sp?). Hence the reason why some people use a "cold plate" as cold "storage" on peltier-based machines...

cheers
tweakr

 

[jor888]

Think base can hold more heat and let it transfer heat to the fins to get cool off by the fan so thinker the better but only up to a certain thinkness then after that its just waste of material and cost.

 

[DrSheep]

I am not EE major, but I know my math.
The point of using a compound is to make the core have the best contact with the heat sink. Too thick of the layer of the compound will result in the heat being trap in between the core and heatsink and not letting the heat to transfure to the heatsink in a timely manner. This is basicly a linear ODE problem which integrate from zero to L where L is your thickness of the compound. The larger L is, the longer for the heat to go from one end to another. Ideally, you don't want any thing in between the core and the heatsink, but due to gaps or unevenness on the contact surfaces, you need to apply a THIN layer of compound in between the cpu core and heatsink.