Gadgetory

modern electronics pack an incredible amount of complexity into a very small space which creates a lot of heat heat that if left unchecked could reduce the lifespan or even destroy outright the processor that created it that's why when you first open up a PC or other electronic device one of the first things you'll see is one or more large metal objects called heat sinks inside a PC heat sinks will be found on the CPU graphics card motherboard inside the power supply and even in other places as needed as you can see they can look very different from each other but they all serve the same basic purpose to remove heat from delicate components and extend their lifetimes let's walk through some of the different kinds of heat sinks you might encounter first up is the heat spreader this is the most basic heat sink and it consists of a simple flat piece of metal it only moderately improves heat dissipation because while metal will transfer heat to the surrounding air faster than plastic it would be much more effective if it also increased the size of the area of the surface that's being used to transfer that heat that leads us to our next common type passive pinned or finned heat sinks these are basically heat spreaders with structures on top of them that dramatically increase the surface area that can be used to dissipate heat to the surrounding air they are much more effective than heat spreaders but they are also more expensive to make and they take up more space speaking of taking up space adding a fan to blow air directly add a thinned or pinned heatsink is relatively inexpensive and very space efficient as a means of dramatically improving heat sink performance for this reason actively cooled thinned heat sinks are one of the most common types of heat sinks found in PC systems where size and cost are major design factors speaking of cost of the most effective and the most expensive common type of heat sink in a PC is a heat pipe or vapor chamber heat sink for very hot components like CPUs or graphics cards the limiting factor of a standard Thind heat sinks performance is no longer the speed at which the fins can be used to dissipate heat to the air but rather the speed at which the heat can be moved away from the very small processor core to the fins in the first place heat pipes and vapor chambers usually consist of an outer copper wall and a material inside that is constantly changing phases between liquid and gas they can be used to carry heat away from a small heat source extremely quickly to a large array of heatsink fins where it can be dissipated to the air so far I've talked mostly about surface area and how that helps but there are other factors that affect heat sink performance up for example copper performs better than aluminum as a heatsink material and among aluminum alloys some of them are better than others but the material selection like many of these other factors cannot be controlled by anyone other than the manufacturer so it might not be that useful to you but what can you do to improve your heatsink performance number one is to lower the ambient temperature if cracking open a window lowers the room temperature by five degrees it will lower your heat sink temperature by about five degrees number two is more air flow the faster the air moves over the heatsink the better it will perform number three is a better thermal interface material no two pieces of metal will ever meet up perfectly and thermal interface materials fill in these micro gaps for better heat conduction or better heat transfer between them replacing the subpar solutions that come pre-installed on your components with high performance aftermarket thermal compound can easily lower temperatures by several degrees or more number four is mounting a good solid mount improves the contact between a chip and a heatsink and ensures effective thermal transfer often a heat sink that isn't performing as expected is being held back by an air bubble trapped in between or a small component nearby that is interfering with the heat sinks mounting pressure speaking of mounting pressure in spite of all the hubbub about the NSA your digital privacy is still under attack and there's not much you can do about it but that doesn't mean you have to be completely undefended hotspot shield is a proud sponsor of fast as possible and they're VPN service does a number of pretty cool things one of them happens to be that it makes it more for someone to track your activities online and identify you with one elite account you can protect yourself across multiple pcs and even your phone or other mobile devices it also has the handy-dandy effect of allowing you to fake your location to the websites you're visiting hello USA netflix even for non-americans am i right you can get 20% off hotspot Shield elite by using offer code - so check it out today and if you're not a hundred percent sure then you can always get a free trial of elite I believe it's for one week thanks guys for watching this fast as possible on heatsinks like the video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment and let me know if you learned something and maybe tell me what it was or if you didn't learn something maybe tell me what you didn't learn I don't know the more comments are below the like better my search rankings are so go to town and as always don't forget to subscribe