This paper experimentally investigates the sintered porous heat sink for the cooling of the high-powered compact microprocessors for server applications. Heat sink cold plate consisted of rectangular channel with sintered porous copper insert of 40% porosity and 1.44 x 10(-11) m(2) permeability. Forced convection heat transfer and pressure drop through the porous structure were studied at Re <= 408 with water as the coolant medium. In the study, heat fluxes of up to 2.9 MW/m(2) were successfully removed at the source with the coolant pressure drop of 34 kPa across the porous sample while maintaining the heater junction temperature below the permissible limit of 100 +/- 5 degrees C for chipsets. The minimum value of 0.48 degrees C/W for cold plate thermal resistance (R-cp) was achieved at maximum flow rate of 4.2 cm(3)/s in the experiment. For the designed heat sink, different components of the cold plate thermal resistance (R-cp) from the thermal footprint of source to the coolant were identified and it was found that contact resistance at the interface of source and cold plate makes up 44% of R-cp and proved to be the main component. Convection resistance from heated channel wall with porous insert to coolant accounts for 37% of the R-cp. With forced convection of water at Re = 408 through porous copper media, maximum values of 20 kW/m(2) K for heat transfer coefficient and 126 for Nusselt number were recorded. The measured effective thermal conductivity of the water saturated porous copper was as high as 32 W/m K that supported the superior heat augmentation characteristics of the copper-water based sintered porous heat sink. The present investigation helps to classify the sintered porous heat sink as a potential thermal management device for high-end microprocessors. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.