How to size heatsinks and fans?

[glend (Glen)]

I need some advice on finding a lightweight, low vibration, heatsink/fan combo for my dslr camera cooler. The present fan is a 100mm cheapee on an extruded alumnium sink, it's too heavy, and is directly mounted so vibration is being transfered to the camera - not good for astrophotos. This combo has to cool the hot side of my TEC (thermoelectric cooler chip) which has a 41x41 mm footprint, sitting on a copper cold finger. I will accept any solution that minimises weight, isolates or eliminates vibration, and can be powered by 12v. Would even consider liquid coolers if head unit weight is low enough. The range of produces in this space is large. For heat load info, the TEC is a 12706 chip rated at 60W. All advice appreciated.thanks

[julianh72 (Julian)]

For what it's worth, I built a camera cooler using a Peltier TEC as the cooling element, and a fan-forced heat-pipe CPU cooler as the heat sink. If I run the fan at 6V instead of 12V, it runs at about half speed (I guess), but more importantly, it runs much more quietly and with a LOT less vibration, while still easily getting the heat away from the TEC.

More details here: http://julianh72.blogspot.com.au/201...ng-on-cpu.html

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

Second hand 70mm Phenom 4 CPU cooler fan. No vibration. Heatsink as per cooling mod specs. I have never had a problem with fan vibration. Any magnetic levitating fan should do it.

Active heat sinks can be selected by wattage and/or thermal resistance. Alpha Novatech heat sinks of Japan is a good source of excellent heat sinks, but the good ones are heavy. The 200 watt 100mm version produced a differential of 36C.

https://www.alphanovatech.com/en/cindex5e.html
https://www.alphanovatech.com/en/cat_fe.html