Why aren't there any Silver heatsinks?

[blanketyblank]

I've been thinking that it's kinda wierd. Supposedly the best material for thermal conduction is silver which is why I suppose Arctic silver and all the expensive thermal pastes profess to using it. However I'm curious why is it that I haven't seen any heatsinks made of silver? I know it's expensive, but people have been willing to pay 300 bucks or more for water cooling and 100 bucks or more for huge heatsinks.

Is there something about silver that makes it a bad heatsink or is it just the cost? At the very least the companies could mix it with copper...

 

[thecoolnessrune]

Look at watercooling blocks the custom made G7s. They are made by one guy and are silver. Air is a waste.

 

[Howard]

Hundreds of dollars for a heatsink capable of only 1 or 2 degrees better cooling?

 

[blanketyblank]

well I don't know about hundreds. I do remember seeing some heatsinks with silver plates or were silver plated a while back, but mostly for AMDs. They were about 40 bucks or so back then.
I've just never heard of a good silver cooler for like LGA 775s just hings like the Tuniq Tower, Big Typhoon, etc... which are made of like copper and aluminum. Of course if a tower is made entirely of pure silver might be a different matter...

 

[A554SS1N]

copper is good enough, and pure silver would cost a fortune I would guess, so there's an answer to why.

 

[Borealis7]

for the same reason they dont make Anchors out of Gold.

(the elves would steal it)

 

[Dolorous Dave]

Effing elves.

 

[sdifox]

I think its something like silver is a better conductor but copper has better dissipation of heat

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Borealis7
for the same reason they dont make Anchors out of Gold.

(the elves would steal it)

Silver i believe has a HIGHER thermal capacity then gold, cooper being right below.

Wiki

There are silver blocks. As someone listed, the cathar G7 is a silver block. However the block also costs 300+ dollars.

There are gold plated blocks as well, such as the zalman waterblock. This however is utter CRAP.


But yeah, cost to performance wise, cooper isnt that far from silver.

406d - 429ag (418f) on silver vs. 385d - 401g (386f - 390e) on copper.

That little difference in thermal conductance wouldnt merit a 150+ price tag on any block, unless u were seriously hardcore and had to get a cathar G7.


Heh, if they ever come out with the Sythnetic diamond as a DIE, we wont need heat sinks. Those things are good to go up to about 500C And i hear we can now make a synthetic dimaond cheap and large enough to be a single die.

 

[Billb2]

Originally posted by: blanketyblank
I've been thinking that it's kinda wierd. Supposedly the best material for thermal conduction is silver which is why I suppose Arctic silver and all the expensive thermal pastes profess to using it. However I'm curious why is it that I haven't seen any heatsinks made of silver? I know it's expensive, but people have been willing to pay 300 bucks or more for water cooling and 100 bucks or more for huge heatsinks.

Is there something about silver that makes it a bad heatsink or is it just the cost? At the very least the companies could mix it with copper...

Danger Den TDX in silver:
http://www.overclockers.com/articles1027/

 

[nrb]

While the basic problem is simply that the extra thermal conductivity of silver isn't sufficiently much greater than that of copper to justify the cost of a solid silver heatsink (for what that would cost you could buy a phase-change or water-cooling rig!) there is one other minor point: silver is heavy. You don't acually see all that many large heatsinks made from pure copper, because copper is also very dense; if you want to make a big heatsink it's simpler to make it from Aluminium because the end product will be less than a third of the weight of the copper equivalent. (And cheaper too!). Silver is even more dense than copper, so it would be difficult to make a very large silver heatsink without making it too heavy to be useable.

 

[Zepper]

A good reason is that silver tarnishes - who needs something else in their PC to have to fuss with. Silver does have a 25% weight disadvantage to Copper and is over 3 times that of Aluminum. For PC purposes there is nothing that is all-around better than plain old Aluminum.

..bh.

 

[40sTheme]

Originally posted by: Borealis7
for the same reason they dont make Anchors out of Gold.

(the elves would steal it)

Same reason they don't make gold wire... conducts electricity really well, but it's expensive.

 

[nrb]

Originally posted by: Zepper
A good reason is that silver tarnishes

True, but so does Copper.

Originally posted by: 40sTheme
[Same reason they don't make gold wire... conducts electricity really well, but it's expensive.

Actually copper is a far better electrical conductor than gold, so there would be no point in gold wire. The reason why electrical plugs are sometimes gold-plated is purely to prevent corrosion at the surface.

 

[Zepper]

Actually silver is the best elemental elecrical conductor too, but not much is used because of corrosion and soldering problems (expense). But there are some outragiously expensive audio intgerconnect cables and Litz wire conuctors for fancy tonearms (remember those old vinyl records?).

I suppose they could tin the silver (or plate it with something) like they do with copper. But then what would be the point? Besides, most thermal energy is transfered by radiation rather than by conduction (some researchers are homing in on the conclusion that it might be all). So the phrase "thermal conduction" may eventually be discarded.

.bh.

 

[Mark R]

Silver is a better conductor of heat than copper, but not by much (only about 10%) - this works out at about a 1-2 C change in temperature by converting a copper heatsink to silver.

Silver also comes with a huge cost penalty, weight penalty and has problems with corrosion. In general, it's too much cost and trouble for too little benefit.

(Everytime we discuss this issue of heatsink material, someone always comes up with comments about how well metals 'give up heat' or 'hold onto heat'. The thermal capacity is irrelevant in heatsink design - all it determines is how quickly the HS warms up when the CPU switches on, and how quickly it cools after shutdown.)

Modern heatsinks make increasing use of heat pipes. The big advantage of heat pipes is their incredible thermal conductivity - this allows heat to be moved relatively long distances, permitting the use of heatsink designs that don't depend on connecting fins directly to a heat spreading slug. (While silver is about 10% better than copper, diamond is about 200% better, heat pipes are about 10,000% better). The use of heat pipes allows much more flexibility in design, by essentially avoiding the limits of thermal conductivity - the problem then becomes one of how many fins you can cram into the available space and airflow.

There is still the issue of the heatsink base - there may be some benefit in replacing a copper base with silver - but as the limiting factor is likely to be the fins, this is unlikely to be worthwhile.

 

[imported_AndyT]

There are 3 main factors as to why we don't see many (if at all) silver heatsinks.

1) Cost

2) Costs allot

3) Costs way too much

 

[Tiamat]

Carbon Nanotubes actually have the best thermal conductivity (3x more than diamond, 10x that of Silver). Artic Silver was so 5 years ago

 

[Howard]

Originally posted by: Zepper
I suppose they could tin the silver (or plate it with something) like they do with copper. But then what would be the point? Besides, most thermal energy is transfered by radiation rather than by conduction (some researchers are homing in on the conclusion that it might be all). So the phrase "thermal conduction" may eventually be discarded.

.bh.

Do you mean convection instead of conduction? Or convection instead of radiation?