Various embodiments of methods and systems for heuristic determination and thermal analysis of component placement on a printed circuit board (“PCB”) for use in a portable computing device (“PCD”) are disclosed. It is an advantage of embodiments that thermal energy generating components, such as processors, may be heuristically selected and arranged on a selected PCB according to varying layouts and combinations and then evaluated for thermal dissipation efficiency under an assortment of use case scenarios. In this way, users of the system and method may quickly narrow down commercially feasible component layouts, identify the most efficient layouts and then heuristically modify the layouts to develop an optimal arrangement.