What exactly is a Heatsink?

Yea.. what the topic says, i tried to find a topic on it but failed?

Thx

It is a metal plate with fins; usually; that sits on a chip or a transistor or anything that becomes warm/hot from current passing through it. What it then does is absorb the heat from the thing it is connected to and pull it away from the heat source; hence the fins. When air is blown over the fins of the heatsink, the air takes the heat from it thus allowing it to cool the thing that it is attached to by taking the heat away from it again.
The term heatsink is right and wrong depending on how you look at it. On one hand you are thinking; Yes, the heat is sinking into the "heatsink". On the other hand you are thinking; does not the term sink mean for something to be drawn down, thus negating the cooling effects by piling the "old heat" and the "new heat" on top of one another. Hope this helps.

yep actually you did =) so are they better then using fans ?

btw, your 1.4 ghz is that overclocked or is it just the normal CPU setting? if its the normal setting, what does it run at over clocked?

NM, just thought of how stupid my question was. You do need the fans for it to work properly right?

yep

On the older computers that did not produce as much heat, the Heatsinks did not need a fan, but on any PC built in the last couple years requires a fan. They do make Heatsinks for RAM and Chipsets that often do not have fans.

open up ur computer.. look in the middle of ur comp above all the slots.. u will see a metal cube with a fan on top.. thats a heatsink.. u need them to get rid of heat of the cpu core.. otherwise the heat stays and gathers and frys the chip.. easy answer ahh im not going to get into water cooling though read up on it.. like articles.

I really hope your not overclocking.

the idea behind heatsinks is that they incease the surface area of the chip which gets too hot on it's own, when attached to a heatsink the chip passes its heat into it and is dissapated off the heatsink at a rate which wil prevent the chip from overheating.