In our post, “Active heat sinks direct air on hot chips but are they always the right choice” we wrote about the benefits and drawbacks of using an active heat sink or fansink. We also talked about system design approaches that should be considered by a thermal engineer. If a system is designed well, be it a workstation or printer, active heat sinks with fans probably won’t be necessary. But if you do decide to go the way of using an active heat sink you should be aware of how overall system air flow affects fan sink performance.
ATS has produced a white paper that can help you understand this important issue. Cooling fans consist of an aggregate of airfoils, i.e., blades positioned around a hub that is driven by an electric motor. Due to their airfoil nature, a pressure differential is required across the blades to create the required flow. Therefore if this pressure differential is disturbed, fans will suffer performance degredation. Our white paper addresses this important issue so you can implement fan sinks in the best way possible. You may download our white paper from our qats.com by visiting the link, “How system airflow affects active heat sinks”