Dennis Garcia and Darren McCain return with their latest Hardware Asylum podcast. In podcast #77 the discussion is that of the humble heatsink. The guys take on the subject of ambient cooling including not only straight forward air coolers with heatsinks and fans conjoined, plus the science behind more advanced technologies such as custom water cooling and more. Enjoy! Here are the show notes for Episode #77.

How much heatsink is enough for your system? - As a hardware enthusiasts we are often asked some interesting questions about building a computer. Sometimes the answers are pretty straightforward like how much memory do I need or will this processor work on this motherboard. Other questions are more opinion based like is AMD really better than Intel or should I get a NVIDIA card or stick with AMD. Dennis got an interesting question this past week about building a computer that was a little of both. “What heatsink should I get?”

In this episode the duo explore the world of cooling in an attempt to answer the question of “how much cooling do you really need?” To a hardware enthusiast the question is pretty easy to answer, we all have our preferences however to a novice there is no clear way to decide on a heatsink and if that heatsink will actually fit the build. This is where things like TDP (Thermal Design Power) , Heat Capacity, Thermal Conductivity, Thermal Efficiency and a little math can help users decide on a product.

Catch the full podcast from Hardware Asylum here.