What Is a Heat Sink?

Do you know what’s a heat sink? If you understand the history of the heat sink? The heat sink is a device for dissipating heat from the heat-generating electronic components in the electrical appliance. It is made of aluminum alloy, brass or bronze, and is made into a plate shape, a sheet shape, a multi-chip shape, etc., for example, the CPU central processor in the computer needs to use a lot of heat dissipation. For the film, the power tube in the TV, the tube, and the power amplifier tube in the power amplifier must use the heat sink. The heat sink is described in detail below. 

Material

The thermal conductivity of each material is different, and the thermal conductivity is arranged from high to low, which are silver, copper, aluminum and steel. Silver is too expensive for the heat sink, copper has good thermal conductivity, but the price is more expensive, the processing is more difficult, the weight is too large, the heat capacity is small, and it is easy to oxidize. Pure aluminum is too soft to be used directly. The aluminum alloy used can provide sufficient hardness. The advantage of aluminum alloy is low price and light weight, but the thermal conductivity is much worse than copper. Some radiators take their own strength and embed a piece of copper on the base of the aluminum alloy radiator.

Generally, the heat sink is coated with a layer of thermal grease on the contact surface of the electronic component and the heat sink, so that the heat emitted by the component is more effectively transmitted to the heat sink and then radiated to the surrounding air through the heat sink. For the average user, the use of aluminum heat sinks is enough to meet the cooling needs.

History of heat sink

The first generation - the era without the concept of heat dissipation

In November 1995, the birth of the Voodoo graphics card brought our vision into the 3D world. The PC has 3D processing power and created a true era of 3D processing technology.

When the Voodoo graphics card was first introduced, there was no cooling facility. The main core chip processing capability on the graphics card was even weaker than the current network card, so the heat generation was almost zero, and almost no additional cooling equipment was needed.

The second generation - the use of heat sinks

In August 1997, NVIDIA entered the 3D graphics chip market and released NV3. It is a 128-bit 2D and 3D accelerated graphics core with a core frequency of 60MHz. The core heat is gradually becoming a problem. The use of heat sinks has officially entered the graphics card field.

The third generation - the arrival of the era of air cooling unit

The release of TNT2 caused a sensation. The core frequency is 150MHz, which supports almost all 3D acceleration characteristics at that time. The performance enhancement means that the core heat is increased, but the process has not made much progress, so the passive way of the heat sink can not meet the current demand, active The cooling method officially entered the stage of the graphics card.

The second-generation fully-covered dual-turbine cooling fan, the heat sink completely covers the entire card, and the air will go out in one direction through two fans in one direction, which can effectively remove the heat of the chip and the memory. Moreover, the two ball bearing fans can effectively reduce the noise, and the metal heat sink makes the life longer.

Subsequently, the application of heat pipe technology just solved the problem of loud noise. It is an effective means to realize rapid heat transfer in a limited space, thereby increasing the heat dissipation area and greatly improving the passive heat dissipation effect.

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