gold heatsink?

[DaMiEn]

alright so last night i was having one of my less practical thinking sessions and i came up with the idea that it might be possible to make a gold heatsink.
since gold is such a great conductor of heat, and it is so malleable, wouldnt it be possible to form gold into a heat sink? it would have to have VERY thin fins and a VERY thin base because of cost but then again wouldnt it be a great performer and even be comparable to watercooling?
just interested to hear other peoples thoughts

[jurtje]

Let's see, from a chemist's point of view. Indeed gold is an excellent heat conductive. However, gold is very soft, so we probably would need to make some alliance with some other strong metal, or just tightning the screws would damage your precious heatsink.

But, I think the improvement over, for example copper, is too little to justify its price. Also, the heatsink would become so exspensive that you could probably buy 10 watercooling sets or phase changing sets for the same money and nothing beats phase changing.

However, if you have the money, time and skills, I wouldn't mind seeing a nice review of it! :twisted:

[ericxw]

I would love to see that, although I'd be too cheap to actually get one of those (If it was made).

It could yeild a small performance increase, not enough to OC any higher than current air coolers. And yeah, the engineers'll have a hard time making sure it doesn't deform.......LOL

And a final thing, that stuff would rip off the heatsink attachment on the mobo........after the mobo breaks in half........LOL

now what I do want to see is a liquid Hydrogen cooled PC........... :lol: :lol:

[silenze]

haha, yeah gold is heavy... heh

[DaMiEn]

cheers for the replies. yeh i guess it aint really too practical but hey, a guy can dream

[DaMiEn]

also,
mmm liquid hydrogen goodness sounds nice :) wouldnt it be a lot similar to liquid nitrogen cooling?

[jurtje]

Boiling point of N is 64 K, versus H 13 K. However, with Nitrogen, your processor already freezes, so I don't think we need to get it any cooler than that!

[silversinksam]

A gold heatsink is an utter waste of time, effort and money, also Gold or silver plating is equally a waste.

Perhaps this info will help. (Gold is great for electronics, but not for thermal dynamics) ;)

Thermal Properties of Materials
Thermal Conductivity, W/cm-K
Metals
Aluminum 2.165
Brass 70% copper, 30% zinc 1.220
Copper 3.937
Gold 2.913
Iron .669
Lead .343
Nickel .906
Platinum .734
Silver 4.173
Steel, low carbon .669

[ericxw]

Silver 4.173


mmmm.......silver..........that could work............a silver based aluminum heat sink.............wait.........dang......still can't afford.............LOL :lol: :lol:

liquid hydrogen is like -268 degrees or something like that.........very close to the absolute 0........while liquid nitrogen is like -189 degrees. So if liquid hydrogen was used, we get a super conductor CPU running at under -200C and OC like hell!!!! Too bad this stuff boils easily so u'd have to refill it... :(

[fstroupe]

Yeah, but think of the bragging rights of having gold bling in your computer...though gold is out, and platinum is in. :lol:

I don't know if the differences in the values shown by the chart are linear or logrithmic, but if linear, silver isn't THAT much better than copper.

I saw a silver heatsink somewhere...though I think it was a water block and not for air cooling.

Seems you could mod a decent copper heatsink with a sanded smooth silver coin or similar piece of silver...for an Athlon anyway.

[undergroundtech]

Danger Den is offering there new TDX water block in silver (limited) & it seems to show a noticable improvment over copper.

[T-shirt]

A gold heatsink is an utter waste of time, effort and money, also Gold or silver plating is equally a waste.

Perhaps this info will help. (Gold is great for electronics, but not for thermal dynamics) ;)

Thermal Properties of Materials
Thermal Conductivity, W/cm-K
Metals
Aluminum 2.165
Brass 70% copper, 30% zinc 1.220
Copper 3.937
Gold 2.913
Iron .669
Lead .343
Nickel .906
Platinum .734
Silver 4.173
Steel, low carbon .669

As it turns out Diamond is the best thermal conductor, but is also prohibitively expensive, and hard to work with. :roll:
For most purposes aluminum (anodized for corrosion protection) is fine. usally getting the heat out of the block (plenty of water flow) and then out of the water (big rad) is more of a problem.
the other weak spot is the thermal interface probably silver soldering a silver plated block directly to the CPU would greatly improve this, but due to the heat this is not a simple home project.

[Axeman098]

Damn! Now THAT would be Bling Bling! Imagine being able to tell yer buddy's you have a 3.5 Karat heatsink! LOL :shock: