Experiments have been conducted for natural convection heat transfer from protruding discrete heat sources, mounted at different positions on a substrate, to determine the optimal configuration, and to study the effect of surface radiation on them, which reduces their temperature upto 12 %. The optimal configuration has been determined by a non-dimensional geometric distance parameter (λ). An empirical correlation has been proposed between the non-dimensional steady state temperature (θ) and λ, by taking into account the effect of surface radiation heat transfer. © 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.