When it comes to keeping components cold on your PC and virtually every other electronic device, heatsinks are the standard, but researchers may have discovered a way to chill your components without them.

A new, sleeker way of cooling, according to Science Daily (via Tom’s Hardware), involves covering the entire gadget with poly and copper.

If you’re unfamiliar with heatsinks, they’re often constructed of copper or aluminium, which are both thermal conductors. They frequently have multiple metal fins that lift and disperse heat away from your device’s critical components, preventing them from overheating. With the help of a nearby fan, the heat is subsequently forced out of the system.

Traditional heat sinks are replaced with “a conformal coating of copper” and “an electrical insulating layer of poly” that is spread across the entire device, according to a study published in Nature Electronics by a group of researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of California, Berkeley.

When compared to heatsinks, the researchers claim that this type of cooling provides “very similar performance,” It might save a tonne of room inside electrical gadgets by eliminating the requirement for a heavy piece of metal, which experts believe can enhance a device’s power per unit volume by up to 740 percent.

The study explains, “You can stack many more printed circuit boards in the same volume when you are using our coating, compared to if you are using conventional liquid- or air-cooled heat sinks.”

The researchers are currently assessing the coating’s efficiency and intend to test it on power modules and graphics cards. It’s too early to say if PC component manufacturers will use this technique to precoat their components or whether you’ll have to do it yourself.

If the coating proves to be a viable alternative to heatsinks, it has the potential to significantly alter the aesthetic of electronics in ways I can’t even imagine. Perhaps the coating will completely destroy the heatsink. While I miss the weird shields that manufacturers construct to hide the heatsinks on motherboards, their disappearance would likely allow for even more creative flexibility in terms of the aesthetic and functioning of a variety of components.

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