Plate fin heat sinks are commonly used in electronics cooling including high end processors. A number of empirical and analytical methods are available to predict their performance but most of the models are valid for fin pitch larger than 3 mm heat sinks in laminar flow. The present work is to investigate high dense plate fin heat sink in both laminar and turbulent regimes. Thermal and hydraulic performance of several dense plate-fin heat sinks were characterized for high end processors in a fully-ducted wind tunnel. All the three heat sinks tested have the same dimensions of 89 mm (L) × 56 mm (W) × 50 mm (H), and fin number varied between 23 and 33. Heat sink base for all heat sinks was made of solid copper, while different fin materials of Aluminum and Copper are used. Several analytical methods for laminar flow from literature were reviewed in this study. A new heat transfer analytical method was proposed for both laminar and turbulent flows. The characterization data from these three parallel plate heat sinks were compared with the analytical methods. Finally, empirical heat transfer correlations were developed for both laminar and turbulent flows.

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