Passive Cooling Heatsinks and the Heatlane Zen - Passive Cooling Performance
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As you can imagine, poor passive cooling can potentially lead to extreme overheating issues. Most passive coolers must be placed in a certain orientation for optimal performance; my novice understanding of thermal dynamics suggests that hot air rises, which tells me air must be able to flow upwards thru the majority of the fins for optimal performance. This means the fins of the heatsink must run vertically, which in this case is parallel to the motherboard. The heatpipe will run perpendicular from the motherboard, or horizontally here, to pull the heat out to the fins.
Here you can see the majority of the fins are parallel to the motherboard, allowing heat to rise through them. Cool air is pulled up thru the heatsink fins to cool the processor.
If a heatsink is mounted wrong, the fins cannot pull cool air thru the fins, like if this cooler was in a desktop form factor case with the motherboard parallel to the desk. Most passive coolers will have a hard time running optimally in this position. Temperatures may skyrocket due to the lack of airflow moving thru the fins. Of course, this is all depending on the airflow designed in the case. A fan is located near the passive cooler should be more than sufficient to remove exhausted air from around the heatsink, either pulling in cool air or providing the heatsink with cool air directly.
Next: Installing a Passive Cooler >>
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