Copper vs Aluminum Heatsink

Copper vs Aluminum Heat Sink – Material Selection Guide for Electronics Cooling

Copper vs Aluminum Heatsink: cgcooler Tell You What You Need to Know

Electronic devices can generate a lot of heat. So, heat sinks play an important role in helping to cool these electronic devices.

You may know that aluminum is the most popular metal for heat sink, but copper is sometimes used as well. You may also realize that copper has better heat conductivity than asluminum.

So it’s natural for people to wonder, “If copper has better heat conductivity than asluminum, but why is aluminum so much more common?”

Let’s compare copper vs aluminum heatsink and look at a few different factors that play into aluminum’s popularity

Copper vs Aluminum Heatsink: Let’s Compare

Let us look at the following tables. In the tables, you can see the three main factors that might influence the decision to use aluminum over copper for heat sink.

Aluminum vs Copper: Heat Conductivity

As you can see in this table, copper has better thermal conductivity than aluminum. In fact, aluminum only has 60% of the thermal conductivity that copper has. That’s one point for copper.

Metal	Thermal Conductivity [BTU/(hr·ft⋅°F)]
Aluminum	136
Copper	231

Aluminum vs Copper: Weight

when you look at the density of the two metals, you will know that aluminum has only about 30% of the density of copper. That means aluminum significant weight savings. One point for aluminum

Metal

Density – ρ – (kg/m3)

Aluminum

2712

Copper

8940

Aluminum vs Copper: Cost

The aluminum is much cheaper than copper. In fact, aluminum comes in at about one-third the cost. That is a significant cost savings for aluminum. So one more point for aluminum.

Aluminum is Popular for a Reason, But Copper Has Its Place

As you can see, cost and weight savings are key factors in the popularity of aluminum for heat sink.

Copper heat sinks are available on the market. They can be used in instances where higher thermal conductivity outweighs the available weight savings.

Besides, significant cost savings can be had by producing heat sinks through aluminum extrusion. Most heat sinks are produced by this way.

Die casting and CNC machining can achieve more complex geometries. But, extruded aluminum heat sink can meet the needs of most projects. If you would like to learn more about our aluminum extrusion capabilities, visit our aluminum extrusions heat sink page.

Copper-aluminum composite heat sink, The most perfect solution of this eclectic solution.

The most perfect solution of this eclectic solution should be the copper-embedded technology provide by cgcooler. This is a harmonious combination of the advantages of fast heat conduction speed, high density and strong heat absorption ability of copper and the advantages of traditional aluminum extrusion type, such as light density, cheap price and convenient mass production.

CGcooler another solution is that change the bottom of the heat sink to copper base that touch the CPU, using copper characteristics of fast heat absorption and strong heat conduction ability, rapidly transfer a large amount of heat generated by CPU operation to a nickel plated copperbase. The copper base and the aluminum extruded heat sink are tightly combined with the heat conducting paste, which makes a large amount of heat energy rapidly spread to the aluminum extruded heat sink and be carried away by the rotation of the fan.