CFD Analyses of Heat Sinks for CPU Cooling With Fluent

In this study, forced cooling of heat sinks mounted on CPUs was investigated. Heat sink effectiveness, effect of turbulence models, effect of radiation heat transfer and different heat sink geometries were numerically analyzed by commercially available computational fluid dynamics softwares Icepak and Fluent. The numerical results were compared with the experimental data and they were in good agreement. Conjugate heat transfer is simulated for all the electronic cards and packages by solving Navier-Stokes equations. Grid independent, well converged and well posed models were run and the results were compared. The best heat sink geometry is selected and it is modified in order to have lower maximum temperature distribution in the heat sink.   This paper was also originally published as part of the Proceedings of the ASME 2005 Pacific Rim Technical Conference and Exhibition on Integration and Packaging of MEMS, NEMS, and Electronic Systems.