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Unread 10-09-2002, 12:18 PM   #98
myv65
Cooling Savant
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: home
Posts: 365
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Anyone is free to quote anything I write in any forum or article. More often than not, it'll even be right, though I admit I am not infallible.

In the very first of my articles I tried to imagine the common sources for the Al vs Cu myth. I suppose what really gets me is two-fold.

One, so many people still insist that aluminum is better at getting rid of heat while copper is better at absorbing it. Yeah, like metals have a brain and can decide to behave differently depending on which way heat is travelling. This is nothing more than confusion over transient vs steady-state conditions. Two, aluminum does have an advantage in the right situation. In air-cooling especially, the thermal resistance of convection largely dominates. This makes aluminum the winner when handled properly. Only when conduction through an unchangeable and small cross section (read: from a die) is important does conductivity really matter much. If you can afford (or make your own from) all copper, it'll always win an "identical shape vs performance" test. If you can't meet those specs, aluminum has its place.
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