Why Doesn't a Fractal Heatsink exist?

So I was thinking the other day while looking for a new heatsink. And while the heatpipe and radiator design is nice. And water-cooling is the s@#t. All in all its just a act of Conveyance to a larger piece of metal with a greater surface area. And surface area to dissipate heat is what the name of the game is. (in as small of a package as possible)

So why not make summon up the powers of the mandelbrot set and bust yourself off a Cubed fractal radiator? I know you could only break it down so much with modern tooling and i'd guess the materials itself. but it'd seem even if you went down by a factor of 2 you'd get around 30x the surface area. (my math sucks) of a traditional style radiator.

Do you think a 6 Axis machine with the most amazingly small drill bits and a CAD drafter that has had way to much coffee could program something along those lines?

or am i just blowing smoke out of my a@#.

A heatsink design like this would be expensive to manufacture and stifle airflow (most of the surface area would never see airflow).

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Originally Posted by Blibbax

and stifle airflow (most of the surface area would never see airflow).

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It could work in a fanless setting, though.

Might as well make this lol
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ki_pyramid.png


I think the machining involved in that would be damn near impossible, as well as very expensive.

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Originally Posted by Blibbax

A heatsink design like this would be expensive to manufacture and stifle airflow (most of the surface area would never see airflow).

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oooh here i made this to explain my idea a little better

Should be able to cool a whole computer, without the need of a fan at all. or a reservoir. if you looped all the cool lines together with a single pump then you would only need a single pump at that.. but thats a hell of a lot of hoses and you could i assume use multiple smaller pumps with a lot less hassle.

But thats just a random idea.

Oh you meant like a radiator type thing?

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Originally Posted by Collinstheclown

Oh you meant like a radiator type thing?

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yea and the hot water intake is equal to the cool outlet and a hot side never touches another hot side directly and always has two cool sides to conduct from. I'd even be efficient from one side to the other since the hots and cools enter from opposing sides and are interlaced.


as that stands though it'd already be 4 hots divided into 10 intake hoses and 20 inlets and 20 outlets multiplied back to 10 exhaust hoses multiplied back into the 4 cool returns.


So i'm thinking its pretty obvious you would need machined manifolds for each side.

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Originally Posted by Twigsoffury

as that stands though it'd already be 4 hots divided into 10 intake hoses and 20 inlets and 20 outlets multiplied back to 10 exhaust hoses multiplied back into the 4 cool returns.

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This is my thinking:

• Massive amount of coupling, hopelessly impractical, multiplying leak risk many-fold
• Massive increase in flow resistance, would need a much higher flow rate. That means a much higher water pressure, and a massive increase in leaks... see point 1
• Enormous blockage risk (though I appreciate that this may be mitigated)
• Uncleanable (can't visually inspect either)
• Unmachinable (would need layers of laminated material therefore reduces thermal conductivity anyway)
• Thermal conductivity in copper is so high, warmer spots a few mm apart are removed within moments anyway, mitigating the need for this design (see last point)
• ...Why not just machine a very large number of straight passages through a thin block? There's an industrial process used for print rollers that drills extremely narrow holes to create a layer of air between the paper and the roller, I've always thought a very large number of small parallel holes like that would be the best option...

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Originally Posted by nevermind1534

It could work in a fanless setting, though.

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Fanless setups rely on airflow too; they just work using convection and natural airflow to move the air...