I still don't get it. The sink obviously doesn't have any mass, so it can't pull much heat away from the esc before it gets to be as hot as the esc is. It has to rely on dissipating the heat into the air around the fins and then getting that hot air out and cool air in to repeat the process. I don't see how you can say that the sink will work without fans. So, this thin aluminum has all of these fins with the purpose of moving the heat from the sink to the air around the fins. So what happens when the air around the fins is the same temp as the sink itself and there's no fan to get the hot air out and cool air in. You have to move the air, because, as I said, air is a horrible heat conductor. The hot air isn't going to pass its heat off to the air around it.

I also don't know how you can say that the sink effectively dissipated that much heat with very little air flow. I'm going to assume that you are talking about the sink being inside of a computer case. If that is true, you can't say that there isn't a lot of air flow. Not only are fans in computer cases designed to move air, but they are placed inside the cases in places where they will be the most effective.

I'm also not getting your mentioning more fins working better with higher airflow and fewer fins working better with lower air flow. I can understand that if you have a given area with say 10 fins, you have to have a higher pressure air flow to cool it than the same area with 5 fins. It's kind of like flowing water through a pipe. With a 1" diameter pipe, you'd have to have a higher pressure/flow to move X amount of water in a given time than you would with a 2" diameter pipe. The larger pipe can flow the same amount of water at less pressure, but it is none the less moving the same amount of water. In this case, since you have lots of fins, the pressure of the air going through the fins is going to be higher than it would be if your sink had fewer fins. Are you saying that your sink is going to work better in this case with little air flow. If so, I'm not following.

I'm not trying to be argumentative. I'm must hoping to learn something.

It still seems to me that attaching the esc to the chassis is the best way to keep it cool. Lots of surface area, inspite of the lack of fins, and lots of mass to store heat until it can be dissipated. I wonder how long it would take an esc to heat a chassis up to 160 degrees F.