I am an engineer with a background in aerodynamics/fluids and am capable of performing Heat/CFD simulations. Is there any way I can contribute to the heat sink/dissipation design. I can't promise anything but I can try if I had more understanding of what the goals/design are.
Goal: Keep shit cool, lol. Im sure you could grab the component measurements off the net or make a rough estimate based on the PCB pictures shown in the thread and make a rough, scalable design.
I need to know how cool. I need estimates of heat generation of the chips (at least) and possibly the other components on the board. Fan or no fan? Stock components or custom (for the heat sink)? etc.
Only the Avalon chips should require heatsinking. They are QFN chips with a thermal pad, each generating a few watts of heat. The pad solders to a PCB pad with many thermal vias, and then the heatsink is mounted on the opposite side. The general plan i have seen from all PCB assemblies is to use one heatsink that covers the entire or almost the entire board.
I don't think any of the designs have needed fans thus far but i'm not sure if they've actually been tested
I don't think any stock heatsinks work with this, but it might be possible to find one that fits the square area and then CNC drill (or by hand) the 4x mounting locations for the K16 board.
I'm trying to figure out a good way to do heatsinking as well, it's currently a single point of failure with sourcing
(oh, and the thermal resistance to the top surface of the chip is massive because of the insulating material in the chip/carrier, so adding heatsinking onto the chips themselves wouldn't help)