A Look At The World of Heatsinks

A reader writes: "There's an interview with Glenn Summerfield, Senior Sales Associate for Alpha Novatech (USA) that talks about heat sinks and where some of it is going." Alpha Novatech is one of the big boys in the field of heat sinks - the responses do have a bit of "salestalk" for Alpha Novatech, but seeing industry thoughts on watercooling vs. aircooling and such is interesting, nonetheless.

Wow! Old-school!

[Skyshadow]

Boy, this story was like a blast from the past!

Fogey mode: You used to see stories like this posted to Slashdot all the time back in the day. Back then, there was no Katz or fluffy BS, just hardcore tech geekiness and Microsoft bashing (yeah, well, some things never change).

Reading over this article was like seeing an old friend again.

Loudness of HSF units

[Tumbleweed]

Keep in mind the noise comes from the FANs in your system (well, okay, the HDs, too, but mainly the fans). There _are_ fans that are quiet! Oftentimes the HSF fan is the loudest one in the system, too, so check your system carefully.

The neat thing about high-end coolers like the Alpha PAL8045 is that the heatsink itself is so efficient that a 'whisper' fan with low airflow can still effectively cool a CPU. I just won a free Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53gHz) last week, and I'll probably be doing just that - a PAL8045 with a quiet CPU. I don't plan to bother overclocking the CPU, as it's already freaking fast.

I went to some sites that specialize in cooling products, and when you buy an HSF at some of them, they let you choose the fan that comes with it, which is nice.

And if you're 'stuck' with a really loud HSF - just replace the fan itself - they usually cost less than US$10.

Dual fans=better?

[Mac Nazgul]

I recently set up a server at work and had a bunch of old pentium class PCs to do it with. Swapping parts I was able to put together a P233 with 256 MB SDRAM w/2 HDs (a whopping 3 and 2 GB) FIguring that this server was going to be running 24/7 I decided it would be good to add some more cooling capabilities to the unit.
With the extra parts I had, I removed the small stock aluminum heatsink and replaced it with a heatsink with 3 inch riser. Then the voltage regulator (I think this was what it was- it was a "clip in" unit that got very hot and had its own small heatsink), which was located directly next to the CPU, was so hot that I replaced it's small 1" square heatsink with a medium sized heatsink from another PCs CPU. Now I had a big riser on the CPU with a .3 A fan and a medium riser on the voltage regulator next to it. Looking at my spare parts, i had another CPU fan of .2 A, which I decided to mount directly on top of the other fan on the CPU. So Now I had a double-decker fan system on the CPU, that was loud but pushed some serious air down onto the CPU. Across from the CPU was a fan on the front of the case with a duct that pointed towards the CPU heatsink. The crappy case design was choking this fan and it was hardly moving any air. So I cut away the grill on the case (the plastic front cover would act as a plenum and a guard) and removed the duct. This gave me enough room to install 2 fans (power supply size- about 3"across) again both blowing towards the CPU. Under full load the CPU would only rise about 10-15 degrees from ambient.
What I am wondering is just how effecient my design is. You rarely see any mods with dual fans. Maybe the noise is bothersome, but this was a server that was going to sit in a corner so I don't care. So, would two fans (presumably the stronger pulling through the weaker is the best) mounted together both blowing in the same direction be effecient? What do fellow slashdotters think?

the state of computing

[green pizza]

Once upon a time software engineers would go through great lengths to optimize their code. Hardware engineers would work closely with the software folks to develop efficent and useful fast paths. Oft-cursed quality assurance teams would spend months hunting down elusive bugs and areas of poor performance. Physical equipment was both elegent and overengineered.

Today we have copper heatsinks that have undergone more engineering than the typical Formula One racecar.

Nevermind that we have to reinstall Windows every eight months or constatnly watch Bugtraq regardless of our platform.