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Thermal expansion produces mechanical stresses that may cause material fatigue, especially when the thermal expansion coefficients of the materials are different. Humidity and aggressive chemicals can cause corrosion of the packaging materials and leads, potentially breaking them and damaging the inside parts, leading to electrical failure.
A finned air cooled heatsink with fan clipped onto a CPU, with a smaller passive heatsink without fan in the background A 3-fan heatsink mounted on a video card to maximize cooling efficiency of the GPU and surrounding components Commodore 128DCR computer's switch-mode power supply, with a user-installed 60 mm cooling fan.
CPU heat sink with fan attached A heat sink (aluminium) incorporating a heat pipe (copper) All electronic devices and circuitry generate excess heat and thus require thermal management to improve reliability and prevent premature failure. The amount of heat output is equal to the power input, if there are no other energy interactions. [1]
Processor power dissipation or processing unit power dissipation is the process in which computer processors consume electrical energy, and dissipate this energy in the form of heat due to the resistance in the electronic circuits.
The selection of a heat sink may end up with overheating (and CPU reduced performances) or overcooling (oversized, expensive heat sink), depending if one chooses a too high or a too low case temperature Tc (respectively with a too low or too high ambient temperature Ta), or if the CPU operates with different computational loads.
Overheating is a phenomenon of rising temperatures in an electrical circuit. Overheating causes damage to the circuit components and can cause fire, explosion, and injury. Damage caused by overheating is usually irreversible; the only way to repair it is to replace some components.
The heat sink thermal resistance model consists of two resistances, namely the resistance in the heat sink base, , and the resistance in the fins, . The heat sink base thermal resistance, , can be written as follows if the source is a uniformly applied the heat sink base. If it is not, then the base resistance is primarily spreading resistance:
The accumulated dust covers metal surfaces and clogs the empty space between the fins of heatsinks, diminishing the dissipation of heat and interrupting the outward flow of warm air. Especially for critical components such as microprocessors and memory banks, this raises the risk of them overheating which can ultimately damage or destroy them ...