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Bill Sodeman writes about management, mobile computing and information systems

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A tale of two heat sinks

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Posted Monday, 16 July 2007, 17:40 HST @070

My brother sent me a link at Tekenstein with an amusing set of pictures regarding heat sinks. The bigger the heat sink, the more heat it can dissipate. The first set of pictures shows a massive heat sink. Of course, heat sinks must be attached to a CPU in a very careful manner, because the chip can be very fragile. The second set of pictures shows a heat sink that someone screwed directly into a motherboard. Maybe the installer needs to RTFM.

A heat sink is a metal device that helps keep a something else cool. Heat sinks are usually installed on the CPU of a computer to keep the Intel or AMD chip from melting or burning. Sometimes the heat sink includes a fan, to keep air moving. I’ve also seen heat sinks and fans attached to the GPU (graphic processing unit) on a graphics card.

Keep your computer clean and cool

Below are some pictures of heat sinks that I found on Flickr. This image shows several sizes of heat sinks (image courtesy Winston_loves_london).

Several sizes of heat sinks

This heat sink is a typical size for a desktop computer, but it is too clogged with dust to be of much use. Dust can really destroy a computer. It’s important to keep your computer off the floor, and to follow a good set of instructions like these from ask-Leo.com and clean-things.com (image courtesy MShades).

A very dirty heat sink

Tags: CPU, free, fun, hack, hardware
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