alu looking copper heat sinks

this hasen't been covered for a while and I just had my first experience with it so thought I would re intro it.



I am not a great alu fan as it takes so much to get any weight. so I just throw all my heat sinks in a bucket and when the bucket is full I seperate them and remove the stainless traps.

friday while sorting I noticed some HS from the servers seemed to be very heavy, like a lb apiece, so I inspected them very closely, couldnt see any thing but alu. so I hit a couple of them with the grinder. bam beautiful shiney copper.

the top sections were alu. but the bottoms were well camoflaged copper. I had 8 of them. I hit them with the torch and found they were soldered together.

30 secounds with the torch and they seperate. the 8 hs yealded 6.7 lbs of #2 copper. I hit them with the grinder and removed the solder and alu coating and ended up with 6.7 lbs of beautiful #1 brite and shiney. each is about 4 in by 3 in and 1/4 in thick. turned $3 into $20 in about 30 min total.

I have been saving all mine good to hear how to get the danm things apart.

me too, I remember when Computer scrapper mentioned it before but it didn't "sink" in ! Is it usually the medium and large ones or has anyone found a little one made of copper. I remember CS said his yard paid radiator price for the mixed ones.

i had some compaq evo desktops with solid copper heatsinks. Several dell and ibm p4 desktops come with copper/aluminum heatsinks as well

Some of the larger heat sinks have a round copper core about an inch in dia. I don't know what they come out of but it's about a half lb. Has anyone seen these?

I had one happy, it was real hard to separate.

You need a sallsaw or a grinder with a metal cutting blade. Cut the heat sink through to the copper, pry the alu. with a large screw driver and smack the copper with a hammer. Should fall right out. By the way do you remember what they came out of?

Originally Posted by happyscraper

Some of the larger heat sinks have a round copper core about an inch in dia. I don't know what they come out of but it's about a half lb. Has anyone seen these?

They come out of Pentium 4s and AMD equivelents. Heat them up, aluminium expands more than copper. Now they can be punched out a lot easier. I do mine under the grill with the cheese on on toast

that's exactly what I did guys ! But AFTER I kept getting bigger and bigger hammers !

spread fins with flat head while holding in vice. Use chopsaw at poin you spread them. Couple minutes ea and you should be set

I like the cheese on toast. Hmmmmm

me, too hs !

I have been tossing the idea of just melting the alum off the copper...

my guess is hit it with a torch then a punch, I have one but do not want to seperate it as I collect odd heat sinks some are very artsy

I have about 15 of them right now. pain in the ***. I was trying to just punch them out, but that didn't work very well, then I tried my ball joint press... that didn't work well either. I finally figured out to saw into the AL and then the copper just fell out... I agree, that's the best way. I guess I never tried to heat them... but I don't have a torch either.

They randomly come from P4 and dual core machines. You never know.