Heat Sink image courtesy of Fab Masters Company, Inc.

One definition of the word sink is to “gradually decrease or decline in value, amount, quality or intensity”. Using this line of thought, it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out what a heat a heat sink is. If you think about it, a heat sink is like the sinks we have in our bathrooms and kitchens— the difference being, instead of water being collected and transferred elsewhere, it is heat.

A heat sink is a metallic piece of equipment that absorbs thermal energy (heat) that is being created inside a working machine, such as a computer, in order to dissipate it into the surrounding air. There is a central processing unit (CPU) inside every personal computer that is most-likely the part that is generating the most heat and thusly will benefit from a heat sink the most. In addition to computer CPUs, heat sinks are also utilized inside refrigerators, heat engines, cooling medical devices and lasers. In general, there are many different types of industries that require heat sinks, some of which include those that are in the business manufacturing medical equipment, industrial products, appliance and LED lighting, as well as the military and electronic industries.

Like the applications they’re used for, heat sinks can vary in characteristics, such as in length, width and height, style, speed and noise level. These variations in design usually correlate with what kind of object the heat sink is used for. Among the different types of heat sinks, there are the larger extruded heat sinks and the un-extruded heat sinks, of which are smaller and enclosed, such as stamped heat sinks, folded heat sinks and bonded heat sinks, which are not as effective as the extruded heat sinks, due to their smaller surface area, thus inability to dissipate heat as quickly.