Thermal & Cooling
Heatsinks, fans, Peltiers — keeping the smoke in
Heatsink
Thermal Management
Finned metal that gives watts of waste heat a path from a small hot chip to the ambient air. The difference between a regulator that lasts years and one that cooks itself is usually a few rupees of aluminium.
Thermal Paste, Pads & Insulator Kits
Thermal Management
Metal surfaces only touch at microscopic high points — the rest is insulating air. Interface materials fill those gaps: paste for best conduction, pads for convenience and gap-filling, mica/silicone kits when the joint must also block electricity.
Cooling Fan
Thermal Management
Moving air multiplies a heatsink's effectiveness several-fold. Modern DC fans are small BLDC motors with built-in drive — some with tach feedback and PWM speed control (the 4-wire PC standard).
Peltier Module (TEC)
Thermoelectric Cooler
A solid-state heat pump: pass DC through a sandwich of semiconductor junctions and one face gets cold while the other gets hot (the Peltier effect). No moving parts, tiny size — but power-hungry and utterly dependent on hot-side cooling.