Hi all,
Just watching James Bond in Casino Royale and looking for a new heat sink for the OpenPCR machine. Thought I would share the process. We need a heat sink for pulling all the heat away from the aluminum block. Our aluminum block is 4 cm square to match our peltier, which is 4 cm square. If our heat sink had a mounting surface of 4 cm x 4 cm that would be perfect to press against the peltier. The current heatsink has a surface smaller than 4 cm square, which makes it necessary to have an 4 cm square 1/8″ aluminum plate between the peltier and the heat sink. This is an extra layer, which means extra cost and extra complexity. If there’s a heat sink out there with a 4 cm x 4 cm surface with a vertical profile and a way to mount the whole heat sink with screws, I want to find it.
I’ll start with Newegg, I’ve honestly done this search before where I found the first 2 vertical heat sinks we tried. One had a way to mount it but is a small surface , the other had no way to mount it, but the surface was the right size. Since I have a better idea about what we need, I’m giving newegg a second shot. The current $15 heatsink, and the price for a cut piece of aluminum would probably be $5, and I’ll just put a rough estimate that the reduced complexity of the design is worth about $10, so something that meets the spec for under $30 would be great. Its outer dimensions are nice and small, 83.5 x 68 x 117 mm, which I looked up before ordering and measured myself once I received it.
“Oh of course, just find a part with a 4 cm square surface, easy easy!”. What would be great is if there were CAD files for everything out there, but there really aren’t. People who want a heat sink don’t want to mess around with dimensions. Instead, they can ask a wonderfully short question “I have a Intel Core 2 Extreme processor – does this heat sink fit?”. If I’m looking for heat sinks with a 4 cm x 4 cm surface, I really need to be talking about processor sizes. Which is an interesting turn.
So, the first one I’m looking at says “Intel Celeron D (Socket LGA 775)”. I google “Intel Celeron D”, which brings back nothing useful, and then I google “Socket LGA 775″, and wikipedia provides the “processor size” of 1.47″ square. My assumption here is that the surface of the heatsink must be at least as big as the processor it fits, so it’s a bit smaller than I need. This could be an incorrect assumption!
The first heat sink spec also mentions it fits other processors, but they’re all the same socket size. Maybe it would be better to work backwards, starting with the socket size I need, and then find heatsinks that fit that processor. Wikipedia pulls back the “CPU socket” category, and I’m on my way. Looks like LGA 1366 is a bit bigger than what I need, which is great — and Newegg has this one, this one, this pricey one.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835114089 : Gargantuan, 122 x 108 x 157 mm.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835150113 : Masscool AWA743, OK, kind of short and stocky, 95 x 95 x 104. Interestingly enough, looking at the manufacturer’s page, it looks like they just include a plate as an adapter for the 1366 socket.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835192017 : Titan NK35TZ. Again, gargantuan, the overall specs are unavailable. specs say the fan is 95 x 95 25 cm, and doing simple estimation I’m guessing the overall size is around 100 x 175 x 100 mm, over 2.5x the volume of the fan we’re using now, arg.
I went ahead and ordered the Mascool AWA743 and Titan NK35TZ and we’ll see how they look. One concern is that it was difficult to find these, so a design that used a simple aluminum plate but allowed for use of a much wider range of heatsinks would be good.