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Natural Convection Heatsinks

In general, natural convection is the simplest and most common method of cooling electronics. In most applications, power levels are low enough that extensive thermal solutions and heatsinks are not required.

However, in some applications, natural convection heatsinks are required due to other constraints. The most common reason to require natural convection heat sink is the elimination of fans from the system. Fans provide an additional failure point, thereby reducing the system's reliability. Fans also increase the noise of the system, can introduce dust and contaminants, and require additional power. For any one of these reasons, a system designer may wish to exclude fans from the system and use natural convection heatsinks.

Enertron Natural Convection Heat Sinks

Natural convection heatsinks dissipate anywhere from four to ten times less heat than a forced convection heatsinks with the same surface area. Furthermore, to allow optimal performance, heat sink fin spacing is typically greater in natural convection heatsinks. For these reasons, natural convection heatsinks are considerably larger than equivalent forced convection heatsinks.

High performance natural convection heat sinks can be designed to include heat pipes. Heat pipes provide a very effective method of spreading the heat over a large area, or to bring heat to remotely located fins or heatsinks. Because natural convection heatsinks often require a large footprint, effective heat spreading is important.

Natural convection heatsinks also typically have a large temperature increase over the ambient air. Because of this, it is often important to optimize other areas of the thermal system and heatsink solutions to limit the overall temperature rise. Areas such as heat sink interfacing, heatsink surface treatment, and heat spreading are common concerns.

To learn more about design and manufacturing of heatsinks for natural convection, please contact one of our engineers.

• 1U Server Heat Sinks
• Power Heat Sinks
• Heat Pipe Integrated Sinks
• Heat Pipes
• Folded Fin Heat Sinks
• Stacked Fin Heat Sinks
• Bonded Fin Heat Sinks
• TEC Integrated Heat Sinks
• Extruded Heat Sinks
• Cold Forged Heat Sinks
• Natural Convection Sinks
• Slim Heat Sinks
• Mini Modular Fan Coolers
• Cold Plates