Experimental and CFD analysis of heat sinks with base plate for CPU cooling

Experimental and theoretical investigations of the thermal performance of a variety of heat sinks have been made. The heat sinks investigated were: straight finned, elliptical finned, small pin finned, circular disc finned, elliptical disc finned, frustum finned and double base straight finned. Realistic, manufacturable geometries are considered for minimizing thermal resistance at low velocity. The experimental results of several of the simple geometry heat sinks have been compared to those predicted by a commercially available computational fluid dynamics code fluent. The parameters such as fin geometry, fin pitch and fin height are optimized primarily in this paper and a second task is carried out to optimize base plate thicknesses, base plate materials and modify design of heat sink for improving the thermal performance in the next generation. Although the performance of heat sink is good, the temperature of heat sink at center is high. In this research work, the best heat sink geometry is selected and modified in order to reduce maximum temperature distribution and hot spots of heat sink at center by changing the geometry design and adding one more base. It is observed that flow obstructions in the chassis and the resulting air recirculation affect the heat sink temperature distribution.