[luau] Underclocking / Aluminum cases

[Joe Linux]

We've sort of beat this subject to death, but I think what we are 
looking for is a material that will quickly move the heat away from the 
source (processor chip) and then quickly give it up to the air.  My gut 
feeling is that copper "holds" heat. whereas steel tends to give it up. 
 I used to build custom marine refrigeration systems and it seems to me 
that when you solder a copper tube, the heat stays with it longer, 
whereas with steel the heat doesn't travel the tube as much.  It tends 
to stay at the heat source and then cool down more quickly once the 
flame is removed.  It may have been said before, but the idea behind 
fins is that they greatly increase the surface area and thus give up 
more heat to the air.  Actually fans always improve cooling.  The issue 
Wayne has is that he wants to eliminate the fan noise.  Perhaps another 
approach would be to continue with a fan in a case with good ducting but 
concentrate on the noise reduction of the fans.  It could be that these 
fans have resonate frequencies that are sympathetic with the case so 
it's possible that some sound deadening material applied to the outside 
of the case could greatly improve the situation.

MonMotha wrote:

> The characteristic you're looking to minimize is Thermal Resistance. 
> I'm no thermo expert though so possibly do some googling on what that 
> is exactly.
>
> Copper will tend to suck the heat away faster and then the objective 
> of the "fins" is to maximize contact between the copper and the air 
> (much larger surface area than cpu core alone) to improve conduction 
> between air and copper as the copper to copper conduction will occur 
> readily to transfer the heat from the area of the CPU core up to the 
> fins.
>
> --MonMotha