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A Look At The World of Heatsinks

Posted by Hemos on from the sales-folks dept.

A reader writes: "There's an interview with Glenn Summerfield, Senior Sales Associate for Alpha Novatech (USA) that talks about heat sinks and where some of it is going." Alpha Novatech is one of the big boys in the field of heat sinks - the responses do have a bit of "salestalk" for Alpha Novatech, but seeing industry thoughts on watercooling vs. aircooling and such is interesting, nonetheless.

3 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Wow! Old-school! by Skyshadow · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Boy, this story was like a blast from the past!

    Fogey mode: You used to see stories like this posted to Slashdot all the time back in the day. Back then, there was no Katz or fluffy BS, just hardcore tech geekiness and Microsoft bashing (yeah, well, some things never change).

    Reading over this article was like seeing an old friend again.

    --
    Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
  2. Loudness of HSF units by Tumbleweed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Keep in mind the noise comes from the FANs in your system (well, okay, the HDs, too, but mainly the fans). There _are_ fans that are quiet! Oftentimes the HSF fan is the loudest one in the system, too, so check your system carefully.

    The neat thing about high-end coolers like the Alpha PAL8045 is that the heatsink itself is so efficient that a 'whisper' fan with low airflow can still effectively cool a CPU. I just won a free Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53gHz) last week, and I'll probably be doing just that - a PAL8045 with a quiet CPU. I don't plan to bother overclocking the CPU, as it's already freaking fast.

    I went to some sites that specialize in cooling products, and when you buy an HSF at some of them, they let you choose the fan that comes with it, which is nice.

    And if you're 'stuck' with a really loud HSF - just replace the fan itself - they usually cost less than US$10.

  3. the state of computing by green+pizza · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Once upon a time software engineers would go through great lengths to optimize their code. Hardware engineers would work closely with the software folks to develop efficent and useful fast paths. Oft-cursed quality assurance teams would spend months hunting down elusive bugs and areas of poor performance. Physical equipment was both elegent and overengineered.

    Today we have copper heatsinks that have undergone more engineering than the typical Formula One racecar.

    Nevermind that we have to reinstall Windows every eight months or constatnly watch Bugtraq regardless of our platform.