Heat Sink Blog
Types of Heat Pipes
This article explores the design and best uses of different types of heat pipes used for electronics cooling. These include: Standard Heat Pipes & Vapor Chambers Variable Conductance Heat Pipes (VCHP) Thermosyphon & Loop Thermosyphon Loop Heat Pipes Rotating...
Heat Sink Design Options
Summary - This article compares three categories of heat sink design: solid metal base, embedded heat pipe base, and vapor chamber base. Each heat sink design is compared on the basis of performance, weight, and cost. Engineers are regularly tasked with heat sink...
Heat Pipe Heat Sink Comparison
Summary: This article compares the cost and performance trade-off among 5 different heat pipe heat sink designs: U-shaped heat pipes with base plate (Cu & Al), direct contact heat pipes, U-shaped vapor chamber, and 3D vapor chamber. Regardless of industry or...
Vapor Chamber vs Heat Pipe Cheat Sheet
In the battle of two-phase devices, vapor chamber vs heat pipe, there’s no clear winner. Each has attributes that make one superior to the other. This engineering guide covers two-phase differences and usage rules of thumb. Its goal is to be concise while...
How Do Heat Pipes Work | Heat Pipes 101
This article covers how heat pipes and vapor chambers work along with typical uses and configuration options. Further, it is designed to be a quick read with links to detailed information throughout the text. How Do Heat Pipes Work? There are three...
Heat Pipe Thermal Conductivity
Knowing heat pipe thermal conductivity is important when performing Excel or CFD modeling of two-phase devices integrated into a heat sink assembly. In theory, heat pipe thermal conductivity can range from 4,000 to 100,000 W/m-K. In reality, the range...
Heat Pipe Design Guide
The focus of this heat pipe design guide is on sintered copper heat pipes (w/water) for electronics cooling applications. This typically translates to dissipated heat of between 20-200 watts (less if power density is high) and power density up to around 25...
Heat Pipe Calculator Use Instructions
Our online heat pipe calculator provides the following heat pipe performance data: heat pipe thermal conductivity by diameter, heat pipe carrying capacity (Qmax) by diameter & orientation, and delta-T from one end of the heat pipe to the other. From this...
Heat Sink Calculator Use Instructions
How to use the online heat sink calculator to determine heat sink performance for a thermal solution using a solid metal base compared to a vapor chamber base. Input variables include fin height, fin thickness, heat source power, and heat sink dimensions. Since...
Heat Sink Size Calculator Use Instructions
How to use the online heat sink size calculator used in the early stages of heat sink design. With the exception of choosing the correct "volumetric thermal resistance”, this is probably our most straight forward calculator. Here's the link to the calculator....
Heat Pipes & Vapor Chambers – What’s the Difference?
At some point in a thermal system design project it may become apparent that the tried and true methods of increasing thermal efficiency - solid base, fin & fan - just aren’t sufficient. Reasons include: Keep out zones prohibit a larger heat sink (thicker...
Vapor Chamber Cooling Design Guide
Electronics cooling using a vapor chamber is a fairly common design choice. This vapor chamber design guide is for the most prevalent types of applications: CPU/ASIC to amplifier applications with power ranging from around 20-250 watts, power density greater...
Vapor Chamber | Heatpipe Alternative
A vapor chamber is an effective heatpipe alternative that boosts heat sink performance by 5-10 oC for typical electronics cooling applications. Vapor chambers are a simple, relatively cost-effective, and very dependable device that can be used alone or in...
Heat Pipe Design Oddities
Heat pipe design is generally a straightforward process, but sometimes custom requirements can yield atypical vapor chamber or heat pipe designs. I won’t be focusing on the specifics of the application or perhaps even the operating parameters. Rather, I’ll talk...
Bending Heat Pipes | How it Affects Vapor Chambers & Heat Pipes
The majority of applications for heat pipes, and to a lesser extent vapor chambers, require these products to be bent. Below are respective examples for high-performance graphics card, semiconductor equipment and networking applications. ...
Fundamentals of Thermal Resistance
Today’s guest blog on the fundamentals of thermal resistance is from Dr. James Stevens, Professor Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado. Dr. Stevens specializes in numerical and analytical heat transfer analysis covering both steady-state and...
Rugged Electronics | Standards & Heat Pipe Solutions
This article provides a general overview of standards that target rugged electronics along with specific challenges and solutions faced by thermal engineers when designing for these applications, especially thermal solutions using two-phase devices: heat...
Clean Heat Sink of Dust Bunnies
My current notebook is about 18 months old and had been running slower and slower for a few months. It was also noticeably hotter causing the fan to run almost continuously. I knew it was that time. About every year and a half I have to take apart my PC to...
Thermal Test Chips
To meet aggressive product time-to-market goals, electrical and mechanical engineers need to work concurrently to envision, model and validate an enormous array of interdependent system requirements. While there’s no doubt that robust thermal modeling of both...
Vapor Chamber Cooling FBDIMMs
Examples and thermal analysis of heat pipe and vapor chamber cooling solutions for high-performance FBDIMM memory modules.
BTX Form Factor PC | Thermally Superior Design That Failed
Comparison of BTX PC architecture with ATX design. While BTX was a thermally superior design, it failed horribly in the market.
Using Fans & Heat Pipes to Cool Smartphones
I recently read an interesting article that explored the practical reasons behind the use of different materials for smartphone enclosures: polycarbonate, glass, and metal. They included tactile preferences, radio attenuation, and surprisingly, thermal...
Types of Heat Pipes
This article explores the design and best uses of different types of heat pipes used for electronics cooling. These include: Standard Heat Pipes & Vapor Chambers Variable Conductance Heat Pipes (VCHP) Thermosyphon & Loop Thermosyphon Loop Heat Pipes Rotating...
Heat Sink Design Options
Summary - This article compares three categories of heat sink design: solid metal base, embedded heat pipe base, and vapor chamber base. Each heat sink design is compared on the basis of performance, weight, and cost. Engineers are regularly tasked with heat sink...
Heat Pipe Heat Sink Comparison
Summary: This article compares the cost and performance trade-off among 5 different heat pipe heat sink designs: U-shaped heat pipes with base plate (Cu & Al), direct contact heat pipes, U-shaped vapor chamber, and 3D vapor chamber. Regardless of industry or...
Vapor Chamber vs Heat Pipe Cheat Sheet
In the battle of two-phase devices, vapor chamber vs heat pipe, there’s no clear winner. Each has attributes that make one superior to the other. This engineering guide covers two-phase differences and usage rules of thumb. Its goal is to be concise while...
How Do Heat Pipes Work | Heat Pipes 101
This article covers how heat pipes and vapor chambers work along with typical uses and configuration options. Further, it is designed to be a quick read with links to detailed information throughout the text. How Do Heat Pipes Work? There are three...
Heat Pipe Thermal Conductivity
Knowing heat pipe thermal conductivity is important when performing Excel or CFD modeling of two-phase devices integrated into a heat sink assembly. In theory, heat pipe thermal conductivity can range from 4,000 to 100,000 W/m-K. In reality, the range...
Heat Pipe Design Guide
The focus of this heat pipe design guide is on sintered copper heat pipes (w/water) for electronics cooling applications. This typically translates to dissipated heat of between 20-200 watts (less if power density is high) and power density up to around 25...
Heat Pipe Calculator Use Instructions
Our online heat pipe calculator provides the following heat pipe performance data: heat pipe thermal conductivity by diameter, heat pipe carrying capacity (Qmax) by diameter & orientation, and delta-T from one end of the heat pipe to the other. From this...
Heat Sink Calculator Use Instructions
How to use the online heat sink calculator to determine heat sink performance for a thermal solution using a solid metal base compared to a vapor chamber base. Input variables include fin height, fin thickness, heat source power, and heat sink dimensions. Since...
Heat Sink Size Calculator Use Instructions
How to use the online heat sink size calculator used in the early stages of heat sink design. With the exception of choosing the correct "volumetric thermal resistance”, this is probably our most straight forward calculator. Here's the link to the calculator....
