[michaelt]

  What are you trying to say though?

In the first image in the linked article, the thermal camera picture has a scale at the bottom. On the scale shown white and red are hottest (66°C) and blue and black are coldest (23°C). The CPU is black (23°C), and the PCB directly adjacent to it is white (66°C).

kees99 and klickverbot are saying it's unlikely the CPU is actually 23°C, especially given the author's statement the CPU was around 60°C, and that it's well known taking thermal camera images of things with different emissivities will produce inaccurate results.

kees99 is also saying, given that the thermal image doesn't accurately measure the temperature of the CPU, the article's statement that the metal casing helps isn't really warranted.

[tagrun]

CPU is at 23C? Are we looking at the same image?

The CPU is the heat generator there, and is in contact with metallic regions around 60C (the red ring, if you compare to the real picture and follow the metallic bevels), where heat conductivity abruptly drops, which is what I've been talking about from the beginning. Since the heat is generated by the CPU and flows to the metal casing and to the PCB, the CPU can't be lower than 60C.

I agree that the reading for the inner region of the metal casing (which is not the CPU) must be off, and it's probably because the emission intensity there isn't strong enough and the camera software is mixing the emission and reflection when inferring the temperature (which gives physically incorrect results because the spectrum won't obey Planck's law, but the error depends on how different the temperatures are, and gets much stronger as they drift apart) rather than doing something like a "dark frame" subtraction (which is doable in principle).

Accuracy concerns aside, though, everything we see there (when you consider the physical context) supports the fact that the metal casing helps spreading the heat (which is obvious, it's a material which high heat conductivity, and there wouldn't be any need to put it there otherwise).

Even the 60C reading must be off by some for the same reason (given the regions appearing at around 70C), of course, but I assume OP doesn't care about that level of accuracy.

[michaelt]

I agree it's true metal conducts heat better than plastic, and that a metal package is a conventional choice for that reason.

I disagree that the thermal image provides evidence of those truths

Does the image prove the CPU has a low temperature? No, the image reports the temperature inaccurately. Does the image prove the package has no hotspots? No, it wouldn't show hotspots if they were there. Does the fact the PCB gets hot tell us much? Not really, you'd expect heat to conduct from the package and balls to the PCB no matter what the package was made from.

[tagrun]

If that cap didn't spreading the heat as well, what you'd be seeing on the thermal camera would be something that glows around 60C-70C (because clearly, the camera's software can more or less resolve the room temperature reflection from 60C thermal radiation), and the color would be more or less uniform in the region above the CPU. There wouldn't be such a strong observed temperature gradient.

Which is the evidence you're looking for.