gold plating heatsink?

[phoenixpinion]

i had an interesting idea, what would happen if you electroplated gold to the bottom of your heatsink or even the whole thing, i dont think its too difficult to do

[The Overclocker]

the silver mountain was coated in silver and it want that good, appart form looking cool there wouldn't be much point

[ptcg]

If you were going to plate it with anything it would be silver (silver is a better conductor of heat than gold)

But, you would need a thick piece of it at the bottom for it to be efficient.. Just plating wouldn't be worth it.. Plating is usually only a few thousanths of an inch thick (typically .003" or less).. This would be expensive, but wouldn't make much of a difference on heat transfer.

Now if the entire heatsink was made of solid silver... (LOL)

[The Overclocker]

im going to try coating my hsf in foam

[Lynx]

Foam is an insulator bad idea. Any way back to gold. Gold is not as good a conuctor of heat as silver or copper so use one of them instead.

[ButcherUK]

Make a diamond heatsink, better heat transfer than silver... be expensive though :)

[Silversinksam]

Originally posted by ButcherUK
Make a diamond heatsink, better heat transfer than silver... be expensive though :)


I was reading about a guy that that used a Diamond setup, here's an Exerpt:

"1 in by 1in square 500 micron thick. They are grown in a reaction chamber in about 3 days. The diamond itself is pitch black, But carbon for carbon it is a real diamond. The interface between the copper and the diamond (tin) is not great. But it did with current set up drop my temps on cpu at overclocking by average 15F "

Apparently it cost him $1050 for three of these squares and thats just crazy IMHO. Also the poor guy broke one of the squares and he's out $350

Regarding Plating a HSF, I agree with many of you that its useless in terms of improving thermal conductivity, but there are exceptions.

If you plate a Hedgehog (Or just the base where it meets the pins) You will get decent improvment as apparently the pins seem to come loose after time and the plating of silver acts as a bond and worth the mod.

Then again how many of us have hedgehogs :rolleyes:

[Crash893]

but gold doesnt tarnish
then again you really dont have a cpu that long when you think about it ( 2 years at most)

[Thermal]

Gold (http://www.theoverclockerzstore.com/OCZstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=CC-OCZGG)
Silver (http://www.theoverclockerzstore.com/OCZstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=CC-OCZGS)
Do these really cool any better???