Thermal control performance of liquid-metal based microchannel cold plate in CPU cooling application

With the rapid increase in power density of electronic devices, conventional cooling technologies face challenges in maintaining thermal reliability under high heat flux conditions. This study proposes a liquid-metal-based microchannel cold plate for high-power CPU thermal management and investigates its thermal-hydraulic characteristics and optimization strategies. A three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer model of a CPU package with a microchannel cold plate was developed and solved using the finite volume method. The effects of cooling media, flow rate, microchannel width, and multilayer structures on temperature distribution, thermal resistance, pressure drop, and heat transfer performance were systematically analyzed. The results show that liquid-metal cooling provides superior thermal control compared with water and nanofluids due to its high thermal conductivity. LM_1 achieves the best comprehensive performance, reducing the CPU maximum temperature by approximately 5 °C under moderate power conditions and by 12.8 °C under a 280 W high-power condition compared with water. Increasing the flow rate enhances cooling performance but causes increased hydraulic loss, while excessive channel width or multilayer configurations weaken heat transfer efficiency. The optimized single-layer microchannel structure achieves an effective balance between thermal performance and pumping power. This study provides theoretical guidance for designing compact and efficient cooling systems for next-generation high-power electronic devices.