Among numerous electronic cooling methods, a vibrating heat sink using sinusoidal wave vibration effectively enhances the heat transfer by disturbing the thermal boundary layer. However, sinusoidal wave vibration has reached its limits in enhancing heat transfer. The present study utilizes a new square wave-shaped vibration and numerically investigates the thermal performance of a heat sink subjected to sinusoidal and square waves vibration. It is found that using the square wave vibration is more beneficial to the thermal performance of the heat sink than the sinusoidal wave. The sudden impulsive motion of square wave vibration induces a higher randomness of the airflow profile and recirculation zones than the sinusoidal wave, causing the air flow to impinge directly into the fin surfaces, and further enhances the heat transfer. Furthermore, increasing the frequency and amplitude leads to a higher heat transfer enhancement. Moreover, square wave vibration achieves a 25 increase in Nusselt values compared to the nonvibrating fins and it is 11 higher than the Nusselt number recorded by the sinusoidal vibration. Consequently, Reynolds number values can be reduced by 42.2 to achieve the Nusselt number values of nonvibrating fins, potentially reducing the cooling system or fin size. This reduction may contribute to solving the challenges of electronic systems compactness. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.