This paper presents a numerical assessment of a minichannel heat sink integrated with multiple heat transfer enhancement techniques. The primary objective is to evaluate the hydrothermal performance of minichannel incorporated with secondary inclined channels and triangular pins (MC-SICTP), compared with other heat sink designs, namely minichannel with triangle pins (MC-TP), minichannel with secondary inclined channels (MC-SIC), and straight rectangular minichannels (MC-RC). Also, an optimization study is conducted to test various position distances of pins (λ) for selecting the optimum pin position, demonstrating the highest hydrothermal performance. Three different types of working fluids are studied, namely distilled water, water-based zinc oxide-multi-walled carbon nanotubes (ZnO-MWCNT), and water-based cerium oxide-multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CeO2-MWCNT). Combining multiple heat transfer enhancement techniques offers a novel approach to enhancing the hydrothermal performance of minichannel heat sinks, contributing to the development of more efficient thermal management systems. The range of Reynolds number (Re) is considered to be from 200 to 1000, and a wide range of hybrid nanofluids volume concentrations of 0.5–2% is investigated. Computational fluid dynamics in ANSYS R21 is used, and the numerical simulations are conducted utilizing the finite volume method, solving the governing equations for heat transfer and fluid flow with applied boundary conditions. According to the findings, it is revealed that the MC-SICTP exhibits superior hydrothermal performance as compared with other designs. The MC-SICTP with (λ = 2) attains the highest performance with Nusselt number enhancement of 1.92 and performance evaluation coefficient (PEC) of 1.27 among other pin positions, at Re = 1000. In addition, the hybrid ZnO-MWCNT nanofluid outperformed the hybrid CeO2-MWCNT nanofluid, reaching a maximum Nusselt number improvement of 2.25 with a maximum PEC of 1.49, at a volume fraction of 2%. © Akadémiai Kiadó Zrt 2025.

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