Active Cooling Heat Sinks

Heat sinks with these additional fans are called active heat sinks while those with the single fan are called passive heat sinks.

Active cooling heat sinks.

Active heat sinks are often used in conjunction with passive heat sinks. The most common fan is the case fan which draws cool air from outside the computer and blows it through the computer expelling the hot air out of the rear. Active cooling in electronics. An active heat sink uses an electronic device s power supply to connect to a fan or a peltier device to actively divert heat away from the components by circulating air to cool the component or conduct heat away from it.

The heatsink is typically a metallic part which can be attached to a device releasing energy in the form of heat with the aim of dissipating that heat to a surrounding fluid in order to prevent the device overheating. The terms active and passive are used frequently when referring to the storage and movement of heat. Passive heat sinks rely on natural convection meaning the buoyancy of hot air alone causes the airflow generated across the heat sink system. Active heat sinks vs.

Heat sinks are most commonly utilized in active passive or hybrid configurations. A heat sink is a device that incorporates a fan or another mechanism to reduce the temperature of a hardware component e g processor there are two heat sink types. As the name suggests it is composed of a passive cooling unit the heat sink and a fan. They only use the convection process to dissipate thermal energy.

Most heat sink applications are passive utilizing natural heat transfer fundamentals. Gareth halfacree it s not enough to entirely prevent throttling though which is where the active option comes in. These systems are advantageous as they do not require secondary power or. These generally have a fan or blower of some kind.

Thermal image of raspberry pi 4 with heat sink cooling. The picture is an example of a heat sink that has both active and passive cooling mechanisms. If the heat sink needs additional thermal cooling capability you can use these four holes to mount a cooling fan. In the image above note that the heat sink s top horizontal plane features four through holes.

The heat sink is usually made from a high temperature conductive material such as aluminum and. An example of an active solar heating system would be a set of solar panels outside the house with a fan to blow hot air. The most common type is a ball bearing motor fan. These have no mechanical components.

These provide excellent performance but they consist of moving parts and are on the expensive side.