If you take a heatsink like the Xigmatek Loki SD963 heatsink in hand and flip it over, what you'll see is an aluminum base with three deep channels cut into it. Set snugly into each of these channels are 6mm diameter copper heat pipes. Heatpipes conduct heat energy quickly and efficiently, taking the heat from an Intel or AMD processor and transferring it directly to aluminum fins over which a steady stream of air flows. The beauty of this simple thermal circuit is that it consists of basically two joints - CPU-to-heatpipe and heatpipe-to-aluminum. Where heat conduction is concerned, joints introduce an unwanted variable called 'thermal joint resistance', so the fewer the better.
In practice, thermal interface compound also counts as a source of thermal resistance, which is why you only apply a very thin coating of the stuff on your CPU/heatsink. Many misinformed YouTube video's show heaps of Arctic Silver TC being painted on CPUs and Xbox GPUs, on the premise "if some is good, more must be better." This is wrong; one need only look up the thermal conductivity of thermal compound and compare that value to the thermal conductivity of aluminum or copper to understand why. Read more...
XIGMATEK LOKI SD963 92mm HYPRO Bearing CPU Cooling
Price $29.99
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