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Will copper heatsinks with silver plated fins be the next rage?

MadRat

MadRat

Lifer
Silver is expensive in quantity but its heat disipation traits are undeniably superior to either copper or aluminum. I don't think it would be necessary to run 100% silver fins necessarily to get silver's benefit. A simple dip in silver or metal plating would probably suffice. With aluminum pretty well beyond its usefulness in heatsinks it would seem only natural to move to copper w/silver plating for the next generation of heat coils... errr, I mean... processors.

Just my 2-cents worth. 😀
 
Probly wouldnt be worth the cost to add silver. The heat transfer coefficient of silver is 415 W/m-K, compared to 386 for copper and 229 for aluminum. Doesnt seem like a big help.
 
Plus the plating process itself would just add another heat transfer problem. Something like people using chrome oilpans. The chrome plating actually holds the heat in the oil longer.
 
I was thinking silver had a better coefficient relative to copper than those numbers. If its that close then it makes no sense to do it except for marketing. But when it comes to marketing every edge over the competition counts.
 
The price of silver being around $4.80/ounce, to replace the aluminum portion (of an aluminum heatsink with copper core) completely with a pound of pure silver would only add about $75 material cost. Probably too expensive for most, but the silver would still retain value as an investment, of sorts, once its mode as a heatsink is over with.
 
<<CONCLUSION

Impressive, this thing will certainly find a place on the top ten! After all, it did just tie our #2 test HSF - the Swiftech MC462-A Rev1, and its only 1/4 the size! Most Impressive! When looking at the Silver Mountain, invariably someone will mention the striking resemblance to the Kanie Hedgehog, which in turn bears a resemblance to many of the heat sinks designed by Alpha. My personal note on this is; in a market saturated by quality coolers, there has to be a point in which all the designs have been used. Simply, there will be a point in which all designs have been tested, and we start going back to the "beginning." Hence the expression running full circle.

Yes folks, I highly recommend this cooler! It's low moderately priced and performs like a champ! You'll have to get your own because I'm not giving mine up!>>

It looks like it may work pretty good after all. At $30 it doesn't seem any more expensive than alot of the top ten!
 
Maybe a silver coating on the botton of the HS might help? The part where it contacts the CPU, that way you might get more transfer to the heatsink itself, but the added cost wouldn't be too much.
 
Thin plating won't do much (especially if its on the fins, where the thermal flux is much lower).

If this was a serious idea, it would be a thick slab at the base to act as a heat spreader.

Anyway, silver is only 10% better than copper (not much to write home about).
 
I've heard naysayers say worse about good ideas and continue to say the same crap when real science said otherwise.

Oh, yeah, weren't you one of the guys that said copper was too expensive to use for heatsinks? 😉
 
Oh, yeah, weren't you one of the guys that said copper was too expensive to use for heatsinks? 😉
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Looking at the price of the solid copper heatsinks, their limited performance advantage - they're too expensive for me at least. 🙂

There are some sensibly engineered heatsinks, that use a copper heat spreader and aluminium fins - keeping down cost and weight in the process, while sacrificing little performance. In fact, many of the new high-performance coolers use this technique. There are few solid copper heatsinks, because they are too expensive.

The key points I'm trying to make are that:
1) thin plating is not going to be good enough, whatever it is made of. Thermal resistance is directly proportional to the cross-sectional area.
2) Silver is not much better than copper: If you plated the fins with 1mm of silver, plating with 1.1mm of copper would be as effective.
3) The thermal flux in the fins is relatively low, you have to work hard to improve their performance. By adding or improving the the heatspreader you get far more bang for the buck.

I suspect though, that as CPUs become smaller and their heat output increases, that there will come a time, when exotic techniques will be needed to the spread heat. Be that, a silver slug with embedded heat pipes, or something else. Diamond (the best thermal conductor available) has been used in the past as a heat spreader in very high performance chips (mainly military). Due to its cost, it's unlikely to be a practical proposition for mainstream (or even enthusiast devices).
 
I tend to see all copper heatsinks outperform their all aluminum and aluminum with copper-insert brethren. Even if its only two degrees Celsius its a fairly large margin as far as heat disipation goes. It takes alot more efficiency to move it that two degrees. And with silver coated looking like it may swing it another degree, the extra $5 cost may be insignificant.
 
Originally posted by: MadRat
And with silver coated looking like it may swing it another degree, the extra $5 cost may be insignificant.
Click to expand...

Yeah but while the cost of coating it with silver may be $1-5 for the company, they will charge an extra $20 just because it is "silver".

 
If they make it glow or do something that makes it ricey(sp?), sure.... I thought neon sticks in PCs are so lame, but goddamn it looks cool inside my PC now...
 
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