The fin vs pins argument is kind of hard, since it all depends on what designs you use when you compare the two diffrent styles. Ofcourse you CAN get a bigger effective surface area with pins no matter what fin block you put up, as you can just slice the fins in it, thus making it more of a pin style block. But at some point you will have too little copper in the WB taking the heat out.
Lets say you have the MOST OPTIMAL design in a fin style block with a certain amount of surface area. If you go by the rule "more surface area = better" then you can take that fin style block and chop up the fins so that it gets more of a pin style block, but you HAVE TO take into concideration what the negative effects are aswell! If you take that optimal fin design and chop the fins to resemble pins you take away copper! Don't forget that the copper is needed for an effective thermal conductance to the water, if you chop the fins to make pins of it (to increase the surface) there is less copper in the block, thus actually decreasing the performance rather than increasing.
Now this theory only works if you have a very very good fin design!! Take a less well designed fin block that has too thick fins and chop it in to pins and of course it will perform alot better!
The same goes to pin blocks, i think lots o blocks out there with pin design would perform better if it had fins instead, because the pins are just too thin.
In theory i think the optimal pin design block will have exactly the same performance as a fin design, and i also belive that they will have allmost equal surface area aswell.
Please comment my thoughts, i just had to ventilate my brain a bit, lemme know what you think.
