Does anybody know a better way to cool a heatsink that is not a fan?
&quot;Cooling&quot; is the transfer of heat from an area of higher heat to one of lower heat. Transferring the heat of your tube to a heat sink is only one step, you then have to transfer the heat of the heat sink to something else. Air works, but if the air is not moving, it acts like an insulator. Think of what insulation is doing in your walls; is is trapping air so that it cannot move, so heat becomes trapped in it. So all the fan is doing is ASSISTING the heat in getting OUT of the heat sink. You can do it without fans, IF you have enough surface area in the heat sink to allow for natural convection to remove the heat. But there are limits to this too, because while the heat is moving THROUGH the heat sinks to the fins in order to radiate and dissipate into the air, it might be building up in the immediate junction area with your device to the point of causing damage. So the fans accelerate that movement of heat for you in order to avoid that. But depending on the ambient conditions, the amount of heat created, the surface area of the heat sink and the availability of convection flow, you may not need fans.