Numerical simulation of heat transfer in a desktop computer with heat-generating components

The heat transfer analysis of considering heat-generating components with different locations of two side-wall fans in a three-dimensional desktop computer was investigated in this paper. Herein, the well-known computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code of PHOENICS was employed to simulate the dissipative heat transfer in a ventilated enclosure. The SIMPLEST algorithm with the hybrid scheme was utilized to simulate these flows. The parameters are focused on the inlet Reynolds number and the locations of two fans on one of the side-wall boards. The calculating results show that the heat transfer efficiency of mode 4 is better than the other three modes due to the directly dissipative heat by forcing fans right on the vicinity of the high heat-generating components. The present findings not only set up a numerical heat transfer analysis of desktop computer but also provide a basis for further simulation of the associated heat transfer for more complicated situations. D 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.