thebucketmouse said:
[quote author=Cyparagon link=1229137511/0#11 date=1229157907]I don't see why you need to transmit the heat between the plates. The object is to sap the heat from the center, and multiple plates should do that quite nicely even though the temp in each plate won't be identical.
Thats what I was thinking, don't people use aluminum washers as a heatsink all the time? Seems like the same concept.[/quote]
It depends if you want something that can do some kind of heatsinking or something that will do the best job of heatsinking.
Back when I used to play around with CPU overclocking, the ability to sap the most heat as quickly as possible from the chip was the biggest part of the challenge (unless you went with esoteric cooling, like water or peltiers).
A single, contigenous block of metal is always going to be better than a multi-part assembly. If you do have to go with an assembly, bolting or gluing pieces of rusty steel together, isn't the best way to do it -oxidized aluminum being, analogically, the same thing.
A good (not perfect, but good) rule of thumb, when trying to judge if something would be good medium for heat transfer, is to look at it's ability to conduct electricity. If it's a good conductor of electricity, it will usually be a good conductor of heat (both being forms of excited electrons).
If Arctic Silver or Thermal Grease is hard to find or too expensive, look in your medicine cabinet for a tube of zinc oxide (people put it on their nose to block sunburn and on their face to dry up pimples) and scrounge up a couple of #2 pencils. Split the pencils, remove and grind up the graphite "lead" into a fine powder and mix it with half a teaspoon of zinc oxide. This will make a quite serviceable thermal transfer paste. -And yes, it conducts electricity quite nicely. Check it with a meter if you like.
~SK
