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I was taking apart an old Dell mini tower PC. I found a strange part that looks like it could be some kind of heat sink but I have no clue as to what it really does. I have two photographs of it:

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and

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It looks like it surrounds some black microchips and is in between some capacitors. What is it and what is its purpose?

Mark Henderson
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Ken Garber
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1 Answers1

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It is a heat spreader for a series of what looks like mosfets, or some other electrical component that generates a large amount of heat.

Basically the black components generate large amounts of heat. The metal spikes take the heat and remove it away from the device by warming themselves up. As the heat gets to the top, it cools down because of the thinness of the metal dispersing the heat into the ambient air inside the computer. The rest of the heat then "takes its place" and is then dispersed, etc.

Mark Henderson
  • 6,468