2011-12-01, 21:35
bluray Wrote:It is oven affect instead. The heat from the component (CPU, GPU, etc) is transfer/dissipate to the component heat sinks. The heat you feel on the case is from the hot air that is trapped inside the case!
There would be at least some dissipation effect from the chassis being a better conductor of heat than steel is.
For example, it's very well established that the aluminum enclosures in Apple products (which, as we know, you will never own) directly contribute to them being able to use quieter smaller fans in their computers, even though the enclosure is not actually designed as a direct contact heat-sink with the components.
My quad core i7 iMac gets quite toasty when doing huge encode batch jobs in handbrake, to the point that it's hot to the touch, even though the fans are barely idling. That's not hot air "trapped inside" the chassis, that's the aluminum dissipating the heat from inside of the chassis to the cooler outside air.