{
 "id": "4.17",
 "slug": "air-cooled-heatsinks-and-vapor-chambers",
 "url": "/parts/servers-racks-and-integration/air-cooled-heatsinks-and-vapor-chambers",
 "name": "Air-cooled heatsinks & vapor chambers",
 "qualifiers": null,
 "layer": {
  "id": 4,
  "name": "Servers, racks & integration"
 },
 "parent_id": null,
 "children": [],
 "summary": "The finned aluminum or copper heatsinks and vapor chambers that spread and dissipate heat from chips that rely on airflow (4.13) rather than a liquid cold plate.",
 "description_md": "Heatsinks and vapor chambers sit directly on chips that aren't covered by a liquid cold plate (layer 5.01) — memory, networking silicon, VRMs, and, in air-cooled server configurations, the CPU or GPU itself — spreading heat across a larger surface area for fans (4.13) to carry away. As rack-scale AI systems move the highest-power chips to liquid cooling, this part's role narrows to the components liquid cooling doesn't reach and to the segment of the market still running air-cooled GPU servers rather than rack-scale liquid systems. That narrowing role doesn't mean the part disappears — it means the design problem shifts toward smaller, more thermally demanding heatsinks squeezed into a chassis that also has to route liquid-cooling plumbing, rather than large heatsinks free to use as much airflow and space as needed. For investors, this tier's growth is more tied to the air-cooled and hybrid segment of the server market than to the highest-end liquid-cooled racks, so its trajectory diverges somewhat from the rest of this layer as liquid cooling adoption increases.",
 "ai_delta": "As the highest-power chips in a rack move to liquid cooling, heatsinks and vapor chambers narrow to the components liquid cooling doesn't reach, shrinking in scope even as they get squeezed into more crowded, liquid-plumbed chassis.",
 "bottleneck_status": null,
 "scale_tiers": [
  "enterprise",
  "hyperscale_building",
  "ai_campus",
  "gw_class"
 ],
 "density_modes": [
  "air",
  "hybrid"
 ],
 "scale_notes": "shrinks in scope per tray as liquid cooling covers more of the heat load, but remains present for the components liquid cooling doesn't reach, even at the highest density tiers.",
 "flow": [
  "compute",
  "power"
 ],
 "companies": [
  {
   "company_id": "auras",
   "name": "Auras",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "3324.TWO",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "avc",
   "name": "AVC",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "3017.TW",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "chaun-choung-cci",
   "name": "Chaun-Choung CCI",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "6230.TW",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "delta-electronics",
   "name": "Delta Electronics",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "2308.TW",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "foxconn",
   "name": "Foxconn (Hon Hai)",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "2317.TW",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "jentech",
   "name": "Jentech",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "public",
   "ticker": "3653.TW",
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "boyd",
   "name": "Boyd",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "private",
   "ticker": null,
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "cooler-master",
   "name": "Cooler Master",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "private",
   "ticker": null,
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  },
  {
   "company_id": "taisol",
   "name": "Taisol",
   "role": "manufacturer",
   "confidence": "inferred",
   "ownership_type": "private",
   "ticker": null,
   "product_note": null,
   "note": null,
   "source_url": null
  }
 ]
}