Guide to Aftermarket Cooling Solutions - Copper heatsinks
(Page 3 of 5 )
The benefit to having an all copper heatsink is that the heat is consistently transferred throughout the heatsink, providing optimal cooling for processors -- normally far superior to the standard aluminum heatsink. On of the drawbacks to a pure copper heatsink is that it comes with a weight penalty, since copper weighs considerably more than aluminum.
Copper heatsinks also allowed users to finally overclock low end processors beyond the speeds of higher end processors.
Original copper heatsinks remained relatively small to reduce stress on the mounting clips until motherboard manufacturers began to create thru motherboard retention mechanisms. While this allowed larger, heavier heatsinks to be installed, they still had their limits until heatsink manufacturers developed backplates to reduce stress on the motherboard.
Processors reached their temperature limits around 2.5ghz. Despite the considerable size and weight of copper heatsinks, they kept up with processor cooling needs; indeed, while most processors have reached their maximum temperatures, some of the extremely large copper heatsinks can provide considerably more cooling than strictly necessary.
Heatpipe Technology
One of the drawbacks to having a pure copper heatsink is that the entire heatsink must heat up before the fan can begin cooling the heatsink, because the heat is not transferred to the fins fast enough for the fan to keep the system running cool. This inspired heatsink manufacturers to introduce heatpipes to their heatsinks' designs.
Heatpipes are generally small copper tubes filled with a fluid which has a low boiling point. When the base of the heatsink reaches that temperature, the heatpipes' fluid begins to boil. The heat is transferred up into the pipe, and is also transferred to the heatsink's fins at the other end of the heatpipe. Although the first generation of heatpipe coolers remained very heavy, later versions would reduce their weight closer to the weight of a standard heatsink while maintaing excellent performance.
Heatpipes used special pipes with low boiling fluids to quickly transfer heat away from the CPU, reducing temperatures considerably.
Heatpipes allow heatsink manufacturers to reduce the weight of the heatsink by removing the majority of the mass of copper in between the base and the top of the fins. They can reduce the weight even more by replacing the heatsink's fins with aluminum fins and still provide better cooling performance than the stock cooler. Heatpipes also allow for fins to be place farther away from motherboard components. By placing the fins closer to chassis fans, the exhausted air can be removed from the case more efficiently.
Next: What to look for when purchasing a new heatsink >>
More Hardware Guides Articles
More By Mike Mackenzie
/ 16 
