Numerical Computations of Advanced Water-Cooled Cold Plates for Thermal Management of Microchips with Hotspots

Thermal and hydraulic performances of several cold plate designs suitable for 3-D printing are analyzed using finite element analysis (FEA). Computers lie at the center of today’s modern world of technology. As technology keeps progressing, greater processing power of these chips is increasingly demanded, and this has led to significant challenges, including overheating, uneven microchip temperature distribution, and localized areas of high temperatures known as hotspots, reducing their reliability and lifespan. Conventional cooling techniques, such as air cooling, often fall short of addressing these problems. Liquid-cooling, micro-channel structures known as cold plates, are developed to address such thermal challenges. In this study, five cold plate designs suitable for 3-D printing are analyzed using FEA. The objective of this study is to assess the effects of varying internal geometries and coolant flow rate on thermal and hydraulic performance. The thermal performance was quantified by the thermal resistance and chip temperature uniformity, while the hydraulic performance was quantified by pressure drop and pump power. Results show cold plates with the highest flow rate and more pin-fins near the hotspot than the rest of the cold plate, specifically Model E, outperforms traditional designs in terms of thermal resistance by 3.67%, but at a cost of 120% increase in pump power requirement. KEYWORDS: Cold Plate; Hotspots; Thermal Management of Microelectronics; Water-Cooled Cold Plates; Computer Chips; Liquid Cooling; Additive Manufacturing Cold Plates; Numerical Analysis of Cold Plates