David Kanter (dkanter@realworldtech.com) on 6/21/11 wrote:
---------------------------
>After a brief hiatus due to travel for conferences and other matters, we are returning
>to our regularly scheduled reading with a new article.
>
>Enthusiasts and engineers know cooling is vital; it raises frequency and dramatically
>lowers power by reducing CPU or GPU temperatures. The world’s fastest supercomputer
>shows that thermal management can increase CPU performance/watt by 20% and 3D integration
>will make cooling more critical in the future.
>
>http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT062011114950
>
>As always, comments, discussion and feedback are encouraged.
>
>David


I think it's essential to stress that PC / Computer cooling industry needs to up its standards.

PC coolers unfortunately come with no documentation / measurements about their thermal characteristics.
Just take a look at http://www.fischerelektronik.de/index.php?id=29&L=1
Say for example http://www.fischerelektronik.de/index.php/fcool_en/?&L=1
This nice company actually states for this piece of heatsink:
Rth [K/W] thermal resistance
0.21 - 0.4
Obviously this is not a heatsink for cpus, but you may cool lots of other sorts of transistors on it...

The same goes for Fans. Just do your research and you will find out that every company has its own standards when it comes to measuring CFM / air flow / air pressure etc.

Thanks for the article!