My point is that it is not as big a gap as you think when you measure the actual Tc.
And if you were to take the fan cost(fan+power) and put it towards sinks...you would lower your passive Tc more for the same price as active. In your situation you are only removing the fan...and not adjusting sink size.
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I see what your getting at, but your nitpicking. I designed the first iteration of the unit as passive (with hope) and found that it was running too hot (>50C). so I redesigned for Version 2 and have shown that it runs passively ok mid 40s.
BUT if I add a few watts of fan it runs 10 degrees C cooler. Your right we are not that far apart, I really was designing for passive. But that 10 degrees seems important to me and it is cheaper to add a bit of active cooling, to get it.
The heat sink thickness is only 0.098", so we have the thermal paste resistance plus the heat sink resistance. making my test point really not far from the Tj, since all measurements were made consistently at the same point, the point is moot.
with extruded heaatsinks from heatsinkusa the cost to lower the temps to the same level is MUCH higher. With the better anodized black pin fin heatsinks the cost is much closer. BUT have you seen the difference in cooling power between active and passive for a state of the art pin fin heatsink ? I recently tested a small 60 mm square sparsely populated pin fin with and without fans and got a 3X increase in performance with a minimal active air flow. pleasantly surprised me at just how well the pins perform.