Identification of minimum air flow design for a desktop computer using CFD modeling

Author

Chang, J.Y. ; Yu, C.W. ; Webb, R.L.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. & Nucl. Eng., Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park, PA, USA

Volume

1

fYear

2000

fDate

2000

Lastpage

338

Abstract

This paper reports the results of CFD analysis to cool the 30-W socketed CPU of a desktop computer with minimum air flow rate and minimum heat sink size. This was achieved using only the fan in the power supply for all air movement in the chassis. A duct was employed to direct the air flow over the CPU and then to the inlet air vents of the power supply. Use of this duct allowed more than 10°C reduction of the CPU case temperature, relative to a unducted design. The CFD analysis results were confirmed by experiment, and the predicted CPU case temperatures agreed within ±2.9°C of the experimental values for the ducted cases. This paper describes the methodology of CFD analysis for the heat sink/duct design, and describes experimental procedures to validate the predictions

Keywords

computational fluid dynamics; cooling; heat sinks; microcomputers; pipe flow; 30 W; CFD model; CPU cooling; desktop computer; duct; fan; heat sink; minimum air flow design; Central Processing Unit; Computational fluid dynamics; Computational modeling; Cooling; Costs; Ducts; Heat sinks; Power supplies; Temperature; Thermal resistance;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems, 2000. ITHERM 2000. The Seventh Intersociety Conference on

Conference_Location

Las Vegas, NV

ISSN

1089-9870

Print_ISBN

0-7803-5912-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ITHERM.2000.866844

Filename

866844