I wonder what effect air turbulence has on the cooling effort. i know you want to restrict the flow as little as possible when using a traditional axial fan on a heatsink, but say you were to design a heatsink where backpressure doesnt even have to be considered? I somehow think that coolermaster has gone about their design wrong with the aero series. you have this fan that is designed to generate higher static pressure than a traditional fan, and they put it on a pretty typcial heatsink design.
I would think a design like the swify would be a fantastic design assuming the use of a centrifigal blower fan.
when air hits the pins on the swifty, it creates more turbulence than if it were to hit a straight and even spaced fin.
If you were to design a all copper heatsink using threaded, sandblashed pins instead of aluminum turned pins, you could maximize the surface area heat can be exchanged by quite a lot.
also, fan placement is of concern, as modern heatsinks are not that efficiant about their design this way. in a pc case, air is blown horizontally "down" onto the heatsink. it blows at the base. this does not really help the air in escaping form the heatsink once it has collected heat.
it is helped some by the rotation of the newer ones, pointing their fins verticly instead of horizontal. in a heatsink that follows a threaded pin method, why not turn the fan 90º blowing up. that way, the air can escape easily from the heatsink verticaly, and you can make use of natural convection to transport the heat too.
There is of course a lot of math involed in this. machine shop skills are good but I would make sure a sound design is thought first.
if you want to try somthing similar, you can just machine down a 1/2" copper base plate and solder some copper fins to it. you might want to make a jig for this since you will want to hot air solder the peice together in one go. I did this once to try and improve performence on my r 8500. it works. im sure retail solutions perform better, but its not to say its impossible.
if you have an idea, and a dream to do something, damnit, do it. its not like there are people hovering over your shoulder ready to smack you for it.
although the offerings in the current market are impressive right now, they are anything buy brilliant or inovative. with a few notable exceptions ^^;;