This study investigates the performance of existing central processing unit (CPU) heat exchangers and compares it with aluminium-foam heat exchangers in natural convection using an industrial set-up. Kapton flexible heaters are used to replicate the heat produced by a computer's CPU. A number of thermocouples are connected between the heater and the heat sink being used to measure the component's temperature. The thermocouples are also connected to a data-acquisition card to collect the data using LabVIEW program. The values obtained for traditional heat exchangers are compared to published data to validate experiments and set-up. The validated set-up was then utilized to test the aluminium-foarn heat exchangers and compare its performance to that of common heat sinks. It is found that thermal resistance is reduced more than 70% by employing aluminium-foam CPU heat exchangers. The results demonstrate that this material provides an advantage on thermal dissipation under natural convection over most available technologies, as it considerably increases the surface-area-to-volume ratio. Furthermore, the aluminium-foam heat exchangers reduce the overall weight. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.