A novel design of gradient-porous heat sink (GPHS) was proposed and numerically studied in this work. Computational simulation was carried out to analyze the effects of gradient porous material (GPM) configuration on the hydraulic and thermal performances of heat sinks in comparison of homogeneousporous heat sink (HPHS) serving as the control. Both gradient pore-size (dp) in the flow direction and the direction normal to flow direction were studied. It was found that, compared with conventional HPHS, GPHS can effectively improve the hydraulic and thermal performances simultaneously. Both the friction factor and overall thermal resistance of heat sinks with GPM configurations are considerably lowered. The Nusselt numbers of GPHS with gradient in flow direction are larger than those of homogeneous porous material (HPM) configurations. GPHS is also featured with the capabilities of effectively suppressing the bottom wall temperature and enhancing the convection performance. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.