I already said most of that too though

@TWRoo: Damn, i missed the post. Nice to agree, though.

I already told you I know the bolded.

By the way, mass doesn't really matter in regards to the thermal performance of a heatsink.  It's all about the geometry.  The area of the base, the thickness of the base, the shape of the fins, the lenght of the fins, the cross-sectional area of the fins, the number of fins, and how the fins are spaced are the main factors.  If you look at the equations for thermal resistance of a heatsink, these are the things that are there, not mass.  It is possible to improve the design of a heatsink by removing mass if you do it in the right place.

As for the material, aluminum alloys offer great thermal conductivity for the price.  As you said, pure copper is too expensive to use, and many of coppers alloys are actually less thermally conductive than aluminum alloys.

drop the GC compability or make it so that you can play GC games with the classic controller and save GC games on the SD card and you could greatly reduce Wii price and size...

Not going to happen.

The Wii cannot play GC games with the Classic controller, when you boot up a GameCube game the WIi essentially "turns into" a GameCube.... which is why from then on you can no longer get back to the Wii menu, pressing reset just resets the game and the only way to get back to "Wii mode" is to turn it off at the console power button (the remote one doesn't work)

As for GC games on SD card, way too much space to take up, and as far as I know the recent update letting VC/Wiiware boot directly from SD would not work for big GameCube games.


It also would not save any decent amount of space either... there really isn't much space it's possible to save in the Wii, so size-wise it probably wont be changed whatever they do to the innards.

Ok but maybe it can do GC emulation in another way other than the "turns into a GC" way. And then it could save GC games (I was talking about game saves, not complete GC games) into SD cards and play GC games through the classic controller, I know it's not gonna happen. But if Nintendo really wanted to slim down the Wii they have many ways to do it...

@theRepublic: I do know that the different mixtures conduct heat differently, which of course is pretty irrelevant in this case.

The bolded was there to remind that the heatsink wouldn't need to perform much better that it currently does.

Now, i don't disagree with geometry being the most important thing, since most efficient (aswell as the most cost efficient) way to cool something, is to remove the heat as fast as possible. Basically adding mass is a way to make the heatsink to reserve more energy, which basically means extended period of time before the heatsink reaches a temperature where natural airflow isn't enough. But, it also makes the fins work more efficiently, since the mass allows the heat to spread more evenly in the fins.

Mass is irrevant in the design phase, since it's when you have the design the heatsink accordingly. When you need to "repair" the heatsink design with limited space, mass usually comes more relevant.

Sony has a hard enough time emulating PS2 games on the PS3.... What makes you think GC games can be emulated on the Wii.

The GC doesn't have the Emotion Engine or the GS, the 360 emulates the Xbox pretty well as far as I know. I really don't know a lot about emulating and stuff, and I won't be a stubborn person if I'm proved wrong, but it seems to me that the easier a console is to develop for the easier it is to emulate. The GC was a developer friendly console, wasn't it?

Well I don't know much myself.... but I would still think it was relatively difficult for the Wii to emulate GC games. Not to mention pointless when it already plays them and doesn't need to be made any smaller, nor would it save any significant money for Nintendo, and it would involve us customers buying GameCube games again to play them. (Which we are already getting better versions of for some games with play on Wii series)