Thermal design of PCs have come on a long way since the days of figuring out where to put the vents in the chassis. FloTHERM’s thermal simulation capability has come a long way as well, keeping track of the ever changing ways in which heat can be removed effectively from an electronics system so as to control temperature rises within it. From TECs and fan sinks to closed loop liquid cooling systems, the insides of home desktop PC systems now look like the illicit offspring of a car engine bay and Optimus Prime.

The more you increase the power dissipation in the package, the larger the surface area of the heatsink has to be to remove the heat and incur the same temperature rise of the package (given a constant air flow through the heatsink). The required surface area nowadays is so large, and the available space so small, that liquid looped systems to remove the heat from the package and pipe it to a more remote air cooled heat exchange where there is more available space, are becoming ever more commonplace. Automotive cooling systems evolved that way about 70 years ago.