Comparative testing of Aluminium, Copper and Finned heat sink performance.
Advantages of using copper over aluminium for heat sinks are often discussed. If you look at high end CPU coolers for personal computers market for example, you will see extended use of copper. Coper thermal conductance is 4.01 W/cmK and aluminium is 2.37 W/cmK. With copper thermal conductivity so much higher that aluminium one would expect significant performance difference in real world. Let’s run some thermal tests.
We have set up a test rig consisting of 200mm X 200mm X 2mm copper and aluminium plates. A heat source was chosen as power mosfet and was mounted in the middle of...