DAN HSLP-48: A powerful sub 50mm heatsink

I will try to get a copper and hybrid version to test if it will be worth to use full copper.

Her is a preview inside the A4-SFX:

side_r._1200askdf.jpg
A 120mm fan would have to be offset from the center in order to not conflict with the I/O components, right? Have you thought about how mounting would work?
 
Dan, I have an idea to how you could add 2 more "heatpipes" for a total of 8.
This would be a huge wow factor, and make sure performance is much better than anything in this formfactor on the market.

You could call it DAN GENUS Because it resembles an octupus because of the 8 arms ;)
mOm4b6P.png
 
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Adding more heatpipes doesn't always increase performance, it blocks the flow and reduces fin area. Also there isn't really space on the CPU itself for 8 to make contact with the DIE/heatspreader.
 
Adding more heatpipes doesn't always increase performance, it blocks the flow and reduces fin area. Also there isn't really space on the CPU itself for 8 to make contact with the DIE/heatspreader.
There is plenty space on the cpu for 8 heatpipes. Take a look at the D15 from Noctua. It has 12. It does this by making the 6 heatpipes go through the cpublock.
Take a look at my drawing, the 2 heatpipes that comes out the back is actually the same heatpippe as the 2 on the front. They just went through.

About performance, if 2 tiny heatpipes can block the airflow to a good degree, then the sidepanel would be a much bigger problem, because it limits airflow way more than a few heatpipes. To sum up, I would say it's pretty safe to conclude they would enhance performance.
 
I think he means that left and right is the same heatpipe. it's not 6+6 but just 6 long ones.
 
I think he means that left and right is the same heatpipe. it's not 6+6 but just 6 long ones.
I thought a heatpipe was defined by a sealed chamber, and since they are sealed at the cpu block I thought it would be 8 heatpipes. I guess I'm wrong. Noctua also lists it as 6 heatpipes, so I'm deffinietly wrong.
 
I'm just wondering if there's really any need for six heatpipes in the design Dan has made. The mass isn't all that big and decreasing to four heatpipes might be a better choice. As mentioned by XstreamHard, the heatpipes block of some of the airflow and reduces fin area.

I guess Noctua or Thermalright could give a few design pointers regarding what's most effecient in a design with limited size
 
I'm just wondering if there's really any need for six heatpipes in the design Dan has made. The mass isn't all that big and decreasing to four heatpipes might be a better choice. As mentioned by XstreamHard, the heatpipes block of some of the airflow and reduces fin area.

I guess Noctua or Thermalright could give a few design pointers regarding what's most effecient in a design with limited size
Take a look at Noctuas coolers. The ones with more heatpipes perform better.
1 heatpipe can only transfer so much heat, so more is always needed to achieve greater results.
As long as the structure of the heatsink and heatpipes is less dense than that of the sidepanel, we should be fine.
 
The NH-L12 has only 4 heatpipes with a diameter of 8mm while the axp 100 has 6 heatpipes with a diameter of 6mm.
 
If I could get this in full copper, manufactured by Noctua, with their (forthcoming) NF-A12x15 fan (dunno if that is the actual model designation, but it seems to make sense), and giving maximum coverage of the MB, but allowing clearance for both the PCIe riser & a brace of Corsair Vengance LPX DDR4 RAM, AND have compatibility with AM4 sockets; I would easily pay $100 to $120 US dollars for this product…!!!

My usage would be in the Firewolfy MI-6 chassis, hopefully with an AM4 socket/X300 chipset ITX MB & Ryzen R7 1700 CPU & a GTX 1070 class (if not a GTX 1080 class) ITX-sized Vega GPU (or a MSI Aero ITX GTX 1070)…! So no worries about exhausted air feeding into the PSU…

Or if Nvidia would just make us a Titan ITX…!!!

Totally forgot, if you can get this manufactured by Noctua (as outlined above), ask for a custom color on the NF-A12x15, all black preferred, but the black frame / grey fan scheme is okay as as well; just anything but the "Coffee & Cream" (aka Two Shades of Baby Poop Brown) that is the Noctua trademark…!
 
Take a look at Noctuas coolers. The ones with more heatpipes perform better.
Because they usually also have a lot more fins

1 heatpipe can only transfer so much heat, so more is always needed to achieve greater results.
Only if you have somewhere to transfer the heat to and from. Heatpipes to far away from the DIE or with to little fin area around them make no sense.

As long as the structure of the heatsink and heatpipes is less dense than that of the sidepanel, we should be fine.
If only fluid dynamics were this simple.
 
Because they usually also have a lot more fins


Only if you have somewhere to transfer the heat to and from. Heatpipes to far away from the DIE or with to little fin area around them make no sense.


If only fluid dynamics were this simple.
Okay.

If we look past wether it helps performance or not, can we agree that there is space for 2 "heatpipes" to be added in the way i described?
We should probably let the manufacture decide which is better.
 
Take a look at Noctuas coolers. The ones with more heatpipes perform better.
1 heatpipe can only transfer so much heat, so more is always needed to achieve greater results.
As long as the structure of the heatsink and heatpipes is less dense than that of the sidepanel, we should be fine.

As already written by XstreamHard, the coolers from Noctua with more heatpipes are coolers that already are quite massive to begin with (one or even two towers that are thicker and wider). The design we're currently discussing is quite small in comparison. Just adding more and more heatpipes doesn't always makes sense if you can't transfer that heat to something. I'm not saying that Dan's design is bad, I'm just asking if six heatpipes are the perfect balance or if four might be better? I think Noctua would be able to give him good feedback regarding this. After all, Noctua has managed to make NH-L9 which is a tiny but efficient cooler. The NH-L9 only has two heatpipes and I guess it didn't make sense to add more. :)

*edit*
And I agree, more heatpipes looks badass, but is it smart?
 
If we look past wether it helps performance or not, can we agree that there is space for 2 "heatpipes" to be added in the way i described?
We should probably let the manufacture decide which is better.

Yeah totally. Noctua or Thermalright is probably going to do a CFD study anyway (maybe even with the DAN A4 case around it) and that will show them exactly what works best.
 
Two comments:

1) If the copper has to be plated for the sake of protection, is there any way to do that and still keep its color? It would be something to talk about, and would seriously make it stand out from all the nickel-plated coolers out there.

2) As for the comment about the fan color... Coming from a Noctua NH-L12, with a full 120mm Noctua fan underneath it in all its brown glory... You can't see any of its color through the heatsink, so why worry about it?

Even if you could, though, don't think of the brown and tan as an ugly color combination; think of it as a trademark. Ferrari has a particular shade of red. Lambos have their ugly headlights. Noctua has brown and tan fans, and that same brown and tan is a statement saying you have nothing but the best out there cooling your CPU.
 
Two comments:

1) If the copper has to be plated for the sake of protection, is there any way to do that and still keep its color? It would be something to talk about, and would seriously make it stand out from all the nickel-plated coolers out there.

2) As for the comment about the fan color... Coming from a Noctua NH-L12, with a full 120mm Noctua fan underneath it in all its brown glory... You can't see any of its color through the heatsink, so why worry about it?

Even if you could, though, don't think of the brown and tan as an ugly color combination; think of it as a trademark. Ferrari has a particular shade of red. Lambos have their ugly headlights. Noctua has brown and tan fans, and that same brown and tan is a statement saying you have nothing but the best out there cooling your CPU.

But the trademark is ugly. People spend vast amounts of time making sure their product is functional and aesthetically pleasing. Then you end up having a stupid ugly brown color to throw all of that off.

Some people don't mind, some people do. After all, the A4-SFX is a lovely piece of hardware.
 
But the trademark is ugly. People spend vast amounts of time making sure their product is functional and aesthetically pleasing. Then you end up having a stupid ugly brown color to throw all of that off.

Some people don't mind, some people do. After all, the A4-SFX is a lovely piece of hardware.
It will probably be black or white then. It's not a matter of trademark colors alone. It also matters because the paint they use is bought in large amounts and buying paint for this specific product might make the price a lot higher.
 
Thinking about heatpipes, I feel that 6 is on the 'more than we need' side of things, especially on a small SFF heatsink.

Heatsink performance is down to balancing all the factors that affect heat transfer. Lets deal with the number of heatpipes vs fins.

It's a case of diminshing returns, or actually decreasing performance either side of the ideal ratio.

The thermal capacity of each heatpipe, - heatpipes rely on the evaporation and condensation of a liquid/vapor to carry heat from one place to another. Compared to simple conduction of heat through a metal, it works much much better and over relatively longer distances, something like 50-100 times more efficient than conduction. There is an efficient window of temperature for a heatpipe based on the type of heatpipe, fill ratio, pressure and choice of fluid. Put too much heat through a heatpipe and its efficiency drops as the liquid/vapour is too hot to condense and no phase change occurs. If we used one or two maybe, this would be an issue, but based on the design of most heatsinks on the market, 4 or so is quite satisfactory for many heatsinks.


A) Number of heatpipes over the CPU
The best place to have a heatpipe over the CPU is as close as possible to reduce thermal resistance between the CPU die and the heatpipe. Our CPU die is not much wider than 2 or 3 heatpipes of 6-8mm width, depending which way you orientate the cooler. Any more heatpipes can only therefore be placed further away. We therefore rely on the conduction of heat through the CPU heatspreader, and through our heatsink heatspreader. If we had 8 of the 6mm heatpipes, thats a minimum width of 48mm, meaning the last heatpipe is centered 21mm away from the centre of the CPU block, or importantly, not directly over the CPU block. As we stated before, conduction of heat is comparatively less efficient, so we have already lost some efficiency here. The last heatpipe receives less thermal energy, and is not doing as much work. (this also means that the fins connected to this heatpipe isnt doing as much work too)

You will see that larger heatsinks don't necessarily have more than 6 pipes for this reason. I think there was a Scythe heatsink that had more than 6, but it placed those heatpipes in a stacked array. What tends to be more useful than more heatpipes is passing the heatpipe through the CPU block, so we utilise both ends of the heatpipe from the CPU block. This is the trend for larger heatsinks, but for us on a smaller heatsink, especially when trying to sling a fan underneath the fins, this is not an option.

B) Transfer of heat from fins to the air.
This is the ultimate goal of a heatsink, to get heat into the air. Conduction of heat from any hot surface into the air is difficult, with comparatively much high levels of thermal resistance. What we then rely on is large surface areas and difference in temperature. A hot surface will heat up the air around the heatpipe, but once the air is heated up, there is no more temperature difference and there is no more energy flowing out of the heatsink. Having airflow means this hot air is removed, and fresh cool air replaces it, ready to take more heat from our heatsink. A little airflow makes a big difference. More airflow helps but with diminishing returns.

Also, the larger the area, the more heat can be transferred. Therefore a larger heatsink that we can pass more air over the heated surfaces, the more heat we can transfer to the air

C) Heating up the fins
The other factor to remember is how well we can heat up the fins. Heat needs to travel from the heatpipe to the fins, and then into the air. If we have a really big sheet of metal connected to a heatpipe, the heat will travel outwards into the sheet. Heat energy can only conduct through the metal at a certain rate, and since we are losing heat to the air on all surfaces, we can therefore understand that the area close to the heatpipe will be hot, and the further outward we go, the cooler the metal sheet. This means that if we make a huge fin, the outer parts of the fin are not going to be as hot, and a smaller temperature difference means less heat is transferred. There is therefore a size that is optimal for a given material that balances the amount of metal we use with the amount of heat we can dissipate.

D) Airflow
Airflow is a product of having a fan, how fast we spin it, and the things in the way that reduce airflow. Things like grills, filters, and the heatsink itself all block airflow. The less in the way, the more airflow we have. We ideally want to minimise things in the way of airflow unless they serve a good purpose. Frontal surface area is one way of trying to quantify how much we are blocking airflow.

Fins have a large surface area, but are orientated in the direction of the airflow so it has a small frontal surface area. This means that if you look straight down through the fins of the heatsink, the fins might only be blocking 10-20% of the frontal surface area. Fins are very helpful for cooling, but only if we can put heat into them, so we also have heatpipes in them. Heatpipes are however solid and round shaped. They contribute very little to surface area, but take up a significant amount of frontal surface area. Looking down from the top of a thermalright AXP-100, the 6 heatpipes block 30-40% of the frontal surface area!! Imagine covering 30-40% of the fan, you are going to need to turn up the RPMs to make up for the blocked airflow. (static pressure becomes relevant here.. another discussion time)


E) Copper vs Alum for fins.
The ability for metal fins to conduct heat from the heatpipe outward through the fins is dependent on the thermal conductivity of the fin material. Copper is a better thermal conductor than aluminium, and therefore will carry heat outwards through the fins better. This means that the heatsink fin further away from the heatpipes will be hotter in a copper fin than alum, and therefore have a higher temperature difference to the air and therefore conduct heat to the air better.

On another topic, I want to set this straight too. There are some people claiming that 'copper is a better conductor of heat, but alum dissipates heat better'. This is nonsensical. The term dissipate means to have energy transferred from one form to another, including the transferring energy from one location to another. The ability for a heatsink to transfer heat from the source to the air is dependent on almost solely conduction, conduction within the material and conduction to the air. Both of these are defined by the thermal resistance of the material and the thermal resistance of the interface with the air. The former is the only one that is significantly different in our context, and copper is definitely the better conductor of heat within a material (about 50% better), meaning heat can get from one end to the other faster. So to set it straight, Copper is superior in a heatsink thermally.

F) Putting Airflow and fin size together
Where we have airflow over a fin, we are able to take heat out of the fins and into the air. With really high levels of airflow, the fins will be cooled down faster than the conductivity of heat through the metal fins will allow. We could potentially have fins that are close to the same temperature of the air and not contributing to cooling. This means for a given level of thermal conductivity, our fins are either too far from the heatpipe, or the fins need to be thicker.

The converse is true, with little or no airflow, thermal conductivity within the metal fin is greater than the conduction into the air, so all of the heatsink fins will be hot. We have maximal temperature difference with the air, but very little airflow or surface area to take the heat away. This means we could have fins that are longer or thinner.

This means we need to balance the fin size around the heatpipes with the level of airflow we will expect to have. Too small a fin with low airflow and the shortage of surface area becomes the limiting factor. Too big for the given airflow and we are wasting metal, cost, and it might not fit. Our SFF systems mean smaller, thinner fans, lower airflow is the common factor here.

G) Number of heatpipes
Fewer heatpipes mean our fins are not going to be heated up but we get better fin surface area. Too many heatpipes and our fins are effectively smaller and possibly under-utilised for our weak slim fans who cant push the air through the increased resistance.

Comparing the ratio between fin surface area and heatpipes on the market, the AXP-100 is already pushing the small fin to heatpipe end of the ratio. Having more heatpipes and smaller fins is good if you have high levels of airflow for performance, but at the cost of efficiency for quieter operation.

This is where copper comes in again, copper allows better conduction of heat within itself, and therefore the fins are able to heat up more over a larger area. The ideal ratio for fin to heatpipe is therefore tipped toward having more fin area than it would be for aluminium.

H) Tuning for all out performance, or efficiency at a lower airflow level.
The key factor here is what we want out of this heatsink. More performance from having maxed out fan RPMs to increase airflow and pressure, so we can have tighter fin spacing and more heatpipes. Alternatively we can aim to reduce fan RPMs by reducing airflow resistance, which could mean maximising the fin to heatpipe ratio but at the cost of all out performance.


I hope this helps us all to understand heatsink design a bit better, and work toward a great outcome.

We all somewhat need to decide if we will be going for all out performance at max fan RPMs, or a more efficient lower airflow performance that allows quieter operation. Yes, a better heatsink does both, but we can optimise it one way or the other.

The DAN HSLP-48 might have slightly more spaced out heatpipes than the AXP-100, and in copper will be really cool. Its going to need some more accurate analysis and testing to be able to optimise the design but this is up to the manufacturer to feel that there is enough commercial value to work on it. Worst cast scenario is having a cooler that performs barely any better than the current L9i or AXP-100 after all that development and tooling cost, and therefore not enough sales to even cover anywhere near all of those costs.

The reality of a heatsink company making this for is if we have a product that can fill a niche not yet covered, and one that should have enough market base that will bring a return on investment for them. This is why we need balance between a design optimised for performance based on our criteria, but one that suits as many other people as possible which improves the chances of this actually becoming a reality. This means compatibility with a wider range of motherboards, cases, and configurations in a PC building market where there is no standard.

Thanks Dan and the other forum members who got this idea off the ground and getting the communication started with the manufacturers.

(sorry for the long post, got carried away)
 
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A vapour chamber is only interesting if you have a big ground plate with fins directly attached to it. The vapour chamber is necessary to share heat over a big surface. Like for the Dynatron T318. But in my design the fins aren't attached on a big ground plate so we will have no advantage of an vapour chamber.
 
That was a very nice post okwchin.
Hope people read this before posting naive suggestions.
I'm going to keep posting naive suggestions. I'm no expert, but I have a free mind and lots of ideas haha.
I will read that long post though.

Whats the source okwchin ? or if you wrote it yourself, whats your titel?
 
dondan or anybody modded the Nexus LOW-7000 R2 with the Prolimatech ultra sleek vortex 12

What is the correct fan position/orientation ? Photo 1 or Photo 2 ? Which fan part is facing the CPU ?? the front or the back ?

Photo 1:
6029044647f239687268bddfd26a7aad.jpg


Photo 2:
nexus_1086b9v.jpg
 
kingtron you'll get better results if you have the fan pulling air from outside, through the heatsink & down onto the motherboard.
 
kingtron: Both will work I made the experience that pushing out of the case (photo1) with the Nexus will be result in better CPU temps (but only for the Nexus not with the L9i, LP53 or C7), but also will increase motherboard temps. So it is up to you if you like better motherboard temps or better CPU temps.
 
It will probably be black or white then. It's not a matter of trademark colors alone. It also matters because the paint they use is bought in large amounts and buying paint for this specific product might make the price a lot higher.
It's the color of the plastic, not paint.
 
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But the trademark is ugly. People spend vast amounts of time making sure their product is functional and aesthetically pleasing. Then you end up having a stupid ugly brown color to throw all of that off.

Some people don't mind, some people do. After all, the A4-SFX is a lovely piece of hardware.

At least it prevents them from adding stupid RGB LEDs to their fans. That is a big plus in my opinion. Also, I really don't mind the color that much. It reminds me of old PCBs.
 
Will this heatsink be enough powerful to handle a 7700K in a DAN-A4 case ?

No one knows, we can theory all we want, but we [Dan] cannot be certain until prototypes & results are released. This heatsink might not even be worth making if there is a 1 deg difference between the l9i or the c7.

Everyone is hoping something miraculous comes out, but tbh I think max change would be 5 Deg C -- which is pretty good, something I might be willing to drop $100 USD on.

And there is the question, even if the CPU has lower temps, what are the other mobo components temps at? IF it lowers CPU by 5 deg, and heightens everything else...

Also, remember if this does comes out, it is a while out for now.
 
No one knows, we can theory all we want, but we [Dan] cannot be certain until prototypes & results are released. This heatsink might not even be worth making if there is a 1 deg difference between the l9i or the c7.

Everyone is hoping something miraculous comes out, but tbh I think max change would be 5 Deg C -- which is pretty good, something I might be willing to drop $100 USD on.

And there is the question, even if the CPU has lower temps, what are the other mobo components temps at? IF it lowers CPU by 5 deg, and heightens everything else...

Also, remember if this does comes out, it is a while out for now.

10 degreace Celcius lower than Noctua L9i i hoped it can perform.
 
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