Estimation of temperature in a computer mother board with discrete heat sources by numerical analysis

Abstract

During the working of PCB, current passes through the conductors and hence heat is generated following the Joulean effect. Hence, there is a need to study the temperature distribution in the PCB and thereon identify the hot spots on the board. This project aims to investigate the distribution of temperature and heat flux on the PCB, by performing steady-state thermal analysis using ANSYS. The number of copper layers in the PCB varies as 2-layers and 4-layers. A mother board made by Intel with i5 processor used in the personal computer (PC) is taken in this analysis with all the components connected to it. The analysis is performed with pure Aluminum and Alloys of Aluminum as core materials. The maximum temperature is observed at the Processor and all the layers of the PCB and lowest temperature is observed at memory chip 4. This trend is observed for both 2-layers and 4-layers. The lowest temperatures are observed when the alloy A356 is used as a core material for 2-layer PCB, whereas for 4-layer PCB, all the alloys produced similar temperatures but less than 100C temperature compared to pure Aluminum.