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Heat sink facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts


AMD heatsink and fan
Two heat sinks inside a computer.

A heat sink is an object that cools another part that is too hot. The heat sink is in contact with the part that should be cooled. It takes heat away and dissipates it, for example into the air around it.

Heat sinks are found in most computers. The chips inside a computer can get very hot. Therefore they need to be cooled, so that they don't break. This is usually done with a heat sink. Heat sinks are also found in most high fidelity audio amplifiers.

Images for kids

  • Laptop Heatsink

    Typical heatsink-fan combination found on a consumer laptop. The heatpipes which contain a working fluid make direct contact with the CPU and GPU, conducting heat away from the component and transferring it to the fin-stack mounted on the exhaust port of the cooling fan. The fin-stack acts as a fluid-to-fluid heat exchanger transferring thermal energy from the working fluid within the heatpipe(s) to ambient air at dead-state condition.

  • Heat sink control volume

    Sketch of a heat sink in a duct used to calculate the governing equations from conservation of energy and Newton's law of cooling

  • Pin fin, straight fin and flared heat sinks

    Heat-sink types: pin, straight, and flared fin

  • Natural-convection-heat-sink-fluid-WBG

    Free-convection flow around a pin-fin heat sink

  • Huawei Tecal ES3000 face 20140805

    A server-grade flash-memory card with a black heat sink

  • Cooling system on an ASUS GTX-650 Ti TOP Cu-II graphics card

    Cooling system of an Asus GTX-650 graphics card; three heat pipes are visible

  • Thermally conductive tape

    Roll of thermally conductive tape.

  • Pin fin heat sink with a z-clip

    A pin fin heat sink with a Z-clip retainer.

  • MaxiGRIP and Talon Clip heat sink attachment methods

    Two heat sink attachment methods, namely the maxiGRIP (left) and Talon Clip (right).

  • Pushpins

    A pair of push pins.

  • Difference between thermal conductivity of thermal interface materials and thermal contact resistance

    Thermal conductivity and the interface resistance form part of the thermal interface resistance of a thermal interface material.

  • 2007-07-24 High-power light emitting diodes (Luxeon, Lumiled)

    High-power LEDs from Philips Lumileds Lighting Company mounted on 21 mm star-shaped aluminium-core PCBs

  • Heat sink thermal resistances

    Sketch of a heat sink with equivalent thermal resistances.

  • Thermal resistance and heat transfer coefficient plotted against flow rate for specific heat sink design

    Thermal resistance and heat transfer coefficient plotted against flow rate for the specific heat sink design used in. The data was generated using the equations provided in the article. The data shows that for an increasing air flow rate, the thermal resistance of the heat sink decreases.

  • Flow-vector-heat-sink-fluid-WBG

    Radial heat sink with thermal profile and swirling forced convection flow trajectories predicted using a CFD analysis package

See also

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Heat sink Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.