fifth grade science fair

At my school we have this thing called the Fifth Grade Science Fair. I'm going to test copper heatsinks and meatal heatlinks to see which one works best. I need a website that can give me some help. Or you can tell me what works better in your computer. Then the price- if you still have it that is. Thank you for your help.

Looks like this is in regards to this thread.

I'd start right here, and read different articles about the heatsinks Joe has tested: http://www.overclockers.com/articles373/socketA.asp

Im just curious, but are you really in the 5th grade?

Yea.. metal probably wouldnt be the *BEST* to start learning the science fair... Im doing mine on how heat effects the CPU and speeds, but im a sophomore =P Oh, and they are usually aluminum, not "metal"

(AL is the TYPE of metal)

Breadfan said:

Looks like this is in regards to this thread.

I'd start right here, and read different articles about the heatsinks Joe has tested: http://www.overclockers.com/articles373/socketA.asp

Click to expand...

Yeah I am. And the only one who knows what a video card is too

That is awesome!! Its really good to see a 5th grader that already knows quite a bit about computers and is in to overclocking! When I was in 5th grade I was still playing with legos. Way to go overclockerlo! (hey that rhymes)

No joke... that is very cool. It's awesome that someone so young would be so interested in this subject. Way to go ^_^

When i was in 5th grade i knew about the software side pretty well. didnt know much about the hardware. Our comp was a 75mhz pos. Then that summer we got a 533mhz HP which cost about $1300. rofl
If i ever have to do a science project again, im doing something w/ comps. Tho i dont think i will have to b/c im in Physical Science right now and next year its Biology Honors and then Chemistry.

Man I was the lego king around my block back in 5th grade. I attribute them to my manys hobbies of building and modifying things including computers.

I did tinker with dos and windows when I was pretty young. I remember my brother saying "Mom Pete is defraging the hard drive!" or "Mom! he converted our windows to fat32!!!!!" but only I knew what they did...sort of.

Thats really great that you have the interest in computers. Keep learning.

i got a 486 given to me by an uncle in forth grade, and by fifth grade i had just found out that the c:\DOS directory was not something i could delete to free up space

When I was in fifth grade, I had a Coleco Adam... tape drive and all. Then I moved up to the smokin' IBM PS2. I think it was a Model 30 with something like a 12MHz 286, 512k Ram (plus a 512k upgrade card) and a 30MB hard drive.

Back on track, a table of thermal conductivity of various metals and other substances can be found here. And a little research that NASA did on it back in 1951.

For my 5th grade science fair project I made a crystal radio. It wasn't until about 10th grade that I got to do computer stuff. My best friend had a "home computer" in his garage... a PDP8!

(For you young'ns that's an 8 foot rack of PC boards that made the computer about as powerful as today's $5 calculators. Had to program it with punched holes in strips of paper.)

What you should do is: Have a pc laid out on a board, hooked up and working, and talk about what it can do and how it does it(kinda). Then make a powerpoint presentation and show them your mad skillz.

Btw, I though I was the youngest member when I joined, but I was in 6th grade. Looks like you beat me though. Lol, how time flies.

Does anyone know where to find that chart that was on the front page a while back with the graph showing the heat levels of CPU dies? You know, where in a few years it will equal that of the space shuttle, and eventually a nuclear reactor?

Breadfan said:

Does anyone know where to find that chart that was on the front page a while back with the graph showing the heat levels of CPU dies? You know, where in a few years it will equal that of the space shuttle, and eventually a nuclear reactor?

Click to expand...

omg, i have to see that.

It's in an Intel report/tech doc on the feasibily of comtinuing moore's law, and I think it outlines their designs for newer, smaller transistors.

Well, I found the version from the ISSCC2001 talk...but I do think there was a nicer version that Intel released that looked better.

If anyone has that, please let me know.

Anyway, here's the version I found:

Getting back on subject... I'll just say this...

I've got an SLK800 Heatsink... it was top of the heap back 6 months ago and I managed to snag it for $35 off of crazy PC at the time... I had upgraded from an SK7 which was also a great heatsink.

Both of those are copper heatsinks and very nice IMO.

If you want to know what makes a good heatsink... the materials that work best are: (from best heat transfer to worst)

-=Best=-
Diamond
Silver
Copper
Aluminum
Gold
Platinum
-=Worst=-

Diamond is much better than any of those metals for heat transfer (very good conductance) but it is far too expensive to make heatsinks out of... and silver is not only expensive but hard to work with when it's 100% pure (if it's not 100% pure then it will be as good or worse than copper)...

So basically Copper is the best thing because it is cheap and has very good thermal properties.

Aluminum, Gold and Platinum are all about equal, but as you can guess, Aluminum is the only one worth trying since it is far cheaper than the other two... which is why the cheaper heatsinks are all made of aluminum or a mixture of copper bases with aluminum fins/pins.

And of course the shape of the heatsink is also important, pins (like the swiftech heatsinks) are better than fins because they have a lot more surface area...

Those are the basics. You should do some reasearch on the stuff I've talked about on Google, I'm sure you can find plenty there.