Cooling Solutions

Full speed ahead while keeping a cool head: A smart cooling solution for unbridled processor performance Electronics are getting smaller and more and more powerful. As component functionalities and packing densities on the chip and board increase, more heat is produced per unit area. congatec’s patented cooling concept for COM Express modules paves the way for future performance growth. A hot performance Heat is not distributed evenly across a circuit board. Hot spots occur in the vicinity of the processors and chipsets, since these components generate the most heat. For this reason, the processors...

Limitations of the conventional solution For the best heat dissipation results, a perfect thermal connection to the cooling system is required. The thermal conductivity of the gap filler material is limited. When power losses are high, the gap filler layer inevitably gets thinner. Thin gap filler layers have lower mechanical tolerances. To compensate for differences in component height more pressure must be applied. The cooling capacity depends to a large degree on the amount of heat-absorbing material used and the heat dispensing surface area. Copper is expensive; large heat sinks are heavy...

New cooling module inspires innovative customer ideas congatec’s new cooling solution provides scope for innovative customer ideas. For example, the heat pipe can be designed in such a way that it can be connected to a customer-specific heat sink. Fanless designs are possible, provided the casing is equipped with appropriately sized cooling fins. Ultimately, the design depends on the specific application. The key features of the concept are equally applicable to other electronic circuits. Hot spots also occur in power modules. Semiconductor circuits in rectifiers and inverters, for instance,...

Keeping COMs cool Flexible cooling solution for COM Express®, XTX™ and ETX® embedded computer modules. COM Express, XTX and ETX embedded computer modules allow for a fairly easy implementation of customer-specific applications. The specific functions, connectors and components for the necessary peripherals can be conveniently placed on a carrier board developed especially for this purpose. The PC itself is attached as a COM (computer-on-module). The performance of the COM and power consumption are easily scalable. The required cooling system can vary depending on the selected performance class....

However, if high performance CPUs are used an additional thermal connection to the heatspreader is definitely required. In most cases the heatspreader and an additional thermal gap pad are attached to a metal casing to offset mechanical tolerance. The metal casing functions as a cooling device. This marked increase in available surface for the purposes of dispensing heat enables even relatively resource-intensive processors to passively maintain appropriate operating temperatures. The heatspreader is also useful at unusually low temperatures. By adding a heating film to the heatspreader, the...

The CPU and chipset used for the sample calculation in Figure 7 have a combined TDP of 25.3 Watts. These Thermal Design Power specifications are “worst case” scenarios. Since it uses a heatspreader, the upper limit for the surface temperature of the thermal concept is 60°C. The maximum environmental temperature is set at 40°C. With these details the maximum thermal resistance required by the cooling system can now be determined in order to stay below a heat spreader surface temperature of 60°C: An appropriate type of cooling unit can now be selected. For the purposes of selection, it is important...

Qseven Cooling Qseven Cooling The Qseven specification defines a heatspreader as a standardized cooling interface. congatec offers module specific implementations of heatspreaders. Setup of all Qseven heatspreaders and cooling solutions: – Phase change foil reduces to compensate gaps between the dies and the copper block. – Copper block to handle the heat transfer. The copper block is fixed by a central pin in order to allow movements only in the height dimension. – Gap pad material between the copper block and the heatspreader/cooling solution to compensate for the height tolerances and to provide...

Qseven cooling solution Qseven heatspreader Qseven heatspreader copper blocks Pin avoids sliding of the copper block Heat Spreader Orange anodized Heat Spreader Orange anodized Cooling Solution Orange anodized Cooling Solution Orange anodized Heat Spreader Orange anodized Heat Spreader Orange anodized Cooling Solution Orange anodized Heat Spreader Orange anodized Heat Spreader Orange anodized Cooling Solution Orange anodized Heat Spreader For Dual/Quad core industrial (lidded FCBGA ) Heat Spreader For Solo/Dual Lite all variants (MAP BGA) Heat Spreader For Dual/Quad core commercial (open FCBGA)...

COM Express® Cooling Setup of COM Express heatspreaders and cooling solutions: Standard Standard Heatspreader The COM Express modules with low power consumption use this setup: – Phase change foil compresses to compensate for gaps between the dies and the copper block. – Copper block to handle the heat transfer. This block is fixed with two pins to allow movement only in the height dimensions. – Gap pad material between the copper block and the heatspreader/cooling solution to compensate for the height tolerances and to provide proper mechanical pressure to the dies. Heat Pipe High performance...

Heatspreader Heatspreaders are compliant to the COM Express 2.1 specification and are shipped with mounting screws. Heat spreaders need to be conducted to other system cooling parts i.e. metal housing. The heat spreader is delivered with mounting material (screws and washer). The longer screws mount the module to the carrier board. There is one addition, short screw to fix the heat spreader to the module. This allows to generate prepared mounting bundles containing module, memory and heat spreader. Cooling Solutions Cooling solutions have fins and are not intended for conduction cooling. The...