Relative Thermal Burst Performance Comparison with the Use of Copper and Silver-diamond Composite as Cold Plate Materials Below Heat Pipes in Notebooks

It is common to cool notebook SOCs using heat pipes, heat sinks and fans. The heat pipes carry heat from the SOC to heat sink(s), and airflow from fan(s) carry the heat away from the heat sink(s) to the ambient. Heat pipes are normally soldered to a cold plate and the cold plate sit on top of the SOC with an intermediate thin layer of thermal interface material. Copper is commonly used as the cold plate material (Figure 4).In this paper, a comparison has been done on the relative thermal performance of a standard copper cold plate and a high conductivity silver-diamond composite material [1], [2], cold plate. A zoom-in, simplified CFD model of the main heat flow path from the SOC to the heat exchanger has been developed and used, and the cold plate material has been switched between cases. The model has been subject to burst power scenarios. Junction temperature of the SOC has been monitored for a given power distribution. Relative burst thermal performance has been compared between the two cold plate materials.Burst thermal performance benefits with the use of silver-diamond composite cold plate has been observed.