Heatsink Colour

In natural convection a black or dark colored heatsink will perform 3% to 8% better than an aluminum heatsink in its natural silverish color. This is due to dark colors radiating heat more efficiently.

In forced air applications, surface color does not increase a heatsink's performance due to the increase in convection. A color would be for cosmetic purposes only.

Basic Heatsink Temperature Calculation

If you have a 10°C/W heatsink and you dissipate 5W into it, its temperature will be 50°C + ambient temperature.

USEFUL?
We benefit hugely from resources on the web so we decided we should try and give back some of our knowledge and resources to the community by opening up many of our company’s internal notes and libraries through mini sites like this. We hope you find the site helpful.
Please feel free to comment if you can add help to this page or point out issues and solutions you have found, but please note that we do not provide support on this site. If you need help with a problem please use one of the many online forums.

Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *