CFD Analysis of Liquid-Cooled Heatsink Using Nanofluids in Computer Processors

Abstract

In this study, a computer model of the Zalman ZM-WB3 Gold heat exchanger which is one of the liquid-cooled computer processors in the market has been generated and the model has been confirmed by the previous researchers’ models and experimental data. Then, the fin thickness and heights of the same heat exchanger and the type of liquid fluid in which the heat exchanger operates have been changed. The CFD analyzes of the new models were performed by using Ansys Fluent 17.1 program. Following that, nano heat removal (cooling) performances were investigated with models using rectangular fin fluid heat exchangers with different fin heights of 5 mm, 5.5 mm and 5.7 mm, and different fin thicknesses of 1.2 mm, 1.4 mm, 1.6 mm, 1.8 mm and 2 mm, and different fluids as water, copper oxide-water (CuO-H 2 O) nanofluids with volume ratios of 2.25% and 0.86%, and graphene oxide (GO-H 2 O) nanofluid with the volume ratio of 0.01%. It was concluded that the best CPU cooler performance could be achieved by using CuO - H 2 O as nanofluid with a volumetric ratio of 2.25% with a heat exchanger that has a 5.5 mm fin height and 2.0 mm fin thickness.