SOLVED Just a thought I had

[William]

The best performance you will get out of a copper heatsink is if it pure copper all around right, not oxidized and reacted like it will do over time. So dunk your heatsink is some HCl or Muriatic Acid(pool Acid is 6 molar HCl) to clean it as HCl is essentially completely unreactive to Copper. Should help performance a little out.

*Modify* Don't do this on aluminum, HCl will eat all aluminum away, and pretty quickly too.

 

[Bender]

How long will it take for the copper to re oxidize? Is there a way to stop oxidization and maintain these benefits.

 

[William]

Bender (May 30, 2001 07:08 p.m.):
How long will it take for the copper to re oxidize? Is there a way to stop oxidization and maintain these benefits.

no copper, as most metals, will react with air around it. Not sure on times, its not bad, but sometimes the new copper from factories will have some CuO on the outside, and HCl should clean that right up.

 

[Hoot]

It's darn near impossible to passivate copper. if you coat it with something, that isolates it from the air, which will no doubt, reduce heat exchange. If your PC room is air conditioned and/or your humidity in the PC room is low, the oxidation will take quite a while to reach the level where it impacts performance.

Hoot