Sometimes we get requests for heat sinks that go something like this:
Requester: “I need a heat sink that looks like [insert other manufacturer here]. Can you like, just cross it over? You know, anything will do as long as it looks kinda like what I need”
ATS Engineer: “Okay, so is this heat sink you need going on a CPU, or a DSP?
Requester: “Umm, its hot, I know that. Really hot”
ATS Engineer: “Okay, well we can work with that. Can you tell us if there is a fan near the device?
Requester: “We have a big fan, really big. Lots of air moving in that box now let me tell you”.
ATS Engineer: “Right then. We’ve got a super hot chip and a hurricane worth of air moving around, do I have that right?”
Requester: “Yes, exactly!”
What we have exactly is a sincere request but not a whole lot of information by which to be helpful.
The fact is, drop in replacement heat sinks rarely are. There are many vectors of design when doing a thermal design. Slapping any old heat sink on and attaching a giant fan may simply not work or be way too expensive.
So what to do?
Well, to the rescue is ATS with our handy ATS Heat Sink Questionnaire. We use this all the time and it is ideal for us (and likely for other engineers too) to gleen the key data necessary to start coming up with the right heat sink, heat sink attach, and thermal interface material necessary to cool a projects hot processor.
We love to hear from our customer’s toughest problems because out of 4000 different heat sink designs we probably have something off the shelf to make your CPU or other hot thingy cool, reduce the size of your hurricane force fan, and give you a more cost effective and elegant solution.