The flow behavior and heat transfer characteristics of conjugate heat transfer under mixed convection for a three-dimensional laminar flow in a rectangular channel with six protruding heat sources, mounted on the lower wall of the channel, have been studied numerically and experimentally. At higher temperatures, radiation plays an important role. This work reports the effect of radiation on conjugate mixed convection heat transfer. Air is taken as a cooling medium and is considered to be radiatively non-participating medium. The parameters considered for the study are positions (streamwise and spansise) of the heat sources, Reynolds number, emissivity of the heat sources, and the thermal conductivity of a printed circuit board (PCB) having constant fluid properties with the Prandtl number being 0.707. The Boussinesq approximation has been used. Commercial software ANSYS Fluent has been used for numerical analysis, and experiments have been carried out in a small-sized wind tunnel. The ranges of Reynolds number, emissivity, and thermal conductivity of PCB are 115–690 (corresponding inlet velocity of 0.25–1.5), 0–0.9, and 0.038–1.4 W/mK, respectively. Results indicate that the radiative heat transfer is significant at lower Reynolds number and lower thermal conductivity of PCB. The streamwise spacing of heat sources has larger influence compared to the spanwise spacing. © 2017, © 2017 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.