Headlines - Danamics tackles CPU cooling with liquid metal

[HEXUS]

Danamics has announced the worlds first commercially available liquid metal based CPU cooler, and it looks mighty promising.

Read more.

[Biscuit]

I like the sounds of this! if it works on PSUs GFX etc then it should take the industry by storm

[Cog]

if the 'liquid metal' that they're using is mercury, they are going to fall foul of RoHS and WEEE, which will make it very difficult to be able to sell it, not to mention the fact that if it were to leak you'd get mercury poisoning

[shaithis]

Could potentially be rubidium, francium, caesium or gallium.

[Cog]

rubidium, francium and ceasium are too reactive, and explode upon contact with water, ruling those out, and if gallium is used, if it gets too cold it expands when it freezes and this would break the container

[Moby-Dick]

I suspect its none of the above due to the extreemly hazardous nature or high cost of that. My guess is that it would be some form of compound suspension ( like a ferrofluid ) , but thats off the top of my head.

[Zhaoman]

Where is it transfering the heat to? From my understanding the "liquid metal" is just going around in circles keeping the heat within the system?

[shaithis]

Its being released as it passes the fins.

[Cog]

its being used in the same way as a heatpipe, but its just much better at moving heat than a heatpipe. so its moving heat into the metal fins and then a fan will probably be attached to move the heat away

[Brewster0101]

What about cost of this very interesting yet new technology.

Will it be cheaper than a regular basic water set up than you can buy??? Will it still require a fan to push heat away!

[lost eden]

Just thought I should pop in to emphasize "the worlds first commercially available liquid metal based CPU cooler". Liquid metal cooling for CPUs is not a new technology, this is just the first time it has been offered to the commercial home user market. Liquid metal cooling has been available for mission-critical server applications for years, using a mix of gallium & some other stuff (indium I think?) pumped around the loop with a magnetohydrodynamic thruster. The one I remember seeing on eBay a couple years back for Xeons resembled a normal water cooling loop more closely, with a separate radiator/fan, pump, CPU block & tubing, rather than an all-in-one tower unit like this one.

There have also been previous promises of consumer-grade liquid metal cooling before, such as Sapphire's Radeon Blizzard X850XTPE.

[Moby-Dick]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinstan

et voila

used instead of mercury in modern thermometers,

[Salazaar]

Originally Posted by Brewster0101

Will it still require a fan to push heat away!

I can't imagine it could operate without a fan. If it draws heat from the CPU more efficiently, it's just going to dump it to the fins faster, so it'll still need transferring away from the fins.

[LuckyNV]

it'll need a fan, the fins are too dense to work in passive very well, and you can clearly see its designed to fit fans on either side.

[HSK]

hmm does sound interesting, need to see some figures soon though, ie price n temps.

[Cog]

Originally Posted by Moby-Dick

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galinstan

et voila

used instead of mercury in modern thermometers,

"It is also a promising coolant, though its cost and aggressivity are major obstacles for its use."

a low quality mercury thermometer costs about £10, and they contain only about 1 cubic centimetre of mercury or less, and guessing how much the pipes on this cooler will contain, this is probably going to cost at least £100, maybe double or triple that (galinstan may be more expensive or cheaper than mercury, but I'm assuming there isnt much difference). I think that its going to be contending with mid to high end water cooling in both price and performance.