Seasonic is working on solid state heat sinks for power supplies

Seasonic wants to equip its power supplies with heatsinks, which the company calls OptiSink Design. These should replace traditional heatsinks, to which Mosfets are screwed, and should cool those Mosfets better.

The first power supplies with this technology should be models from the cheaper Focus and Core series. With the OptiSink Design heatsinks, Seasonic wants to simplify the production process of the power supplies, reduce manual labor costs and, most importantly, improve cooling efficiency. OptiSink Design uses a copper-plated PCB, which serves as a heatsink, instead of a traditional metal heatsink. The mosfets of the power supply must be screwed onto that 'old-fashioned' heatsink with a layer of thermally conductive paste with glue in between. That process is manual and difficult to get consistent. Sometimes a screw can be tightened harder and more or less paste can be used.

With the PCB cooling, which, like the metal cooling fins, is placed perpendicular to the large PCB of the power supply, Seasonic switches to SMD MOSFETs that are mechanically placed on the PCBs and soldered via reflow. This produces more consistent products and the solder should allow better heat conduction. Small holes in the copper layer on the PCB are intended to increase the surface area, so that more heat can be released to the environment. In addition, the PCB heatsinks are smaller than metal ones. This benefits the airflow within the power supply, and thus the cooling. Initially, the technology will come to the Core and Focus power supplies, but later also to the high-end power supplies in the Prime series.

The Prime series has been expanded with a power supply of no less than 2200W, which is of course fully modular and made according to the ATX 3.1 standard. The power supply is 80 Plus Platinum certified and comes with a twelve-year warranty. A version of the Prime TX with slightly less power, 'only' 1600W, is equipped with a Noctua fan, the NF-A12x25, which should make the power supply 8 to 10dB(A) quieter.