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Liquid Metal CPU Cooling
IceFoot writes "Bored with water cooling? Try a liquid metal cooler. It's a proven technology, used in nuclear reactors for decades because it carries heat away much better than a heat sink, heat pipe, or water cooling."
To email IceFoot, send to sales@nanocoolers.com
Try a liquid metal cooler. It's a proven technology, used in nuclear reactors for decades because it carries heat away much better than a heat sink, heat pipe, or water cooling. /me picks jaw up off the floor.
:-D
Liquid metal cooling is used in reactors because of the *extreme temperatures*, not just because it's more efficient. The metal (usually Sodium, but sometimes lead) is maintained in a molten state as it passes through the reactor and on back to the heat exchanger. Are they *really* saying that a CPU is going to pump enough heat to maintain a molten state inside the cooling device? If yes, that's kind of scary.
Maybe it's time to rethink the approach of driving up power usage to 300 watts just to get an extra 2 frames per second on Doom? Either that or we should start installing nuclear reactors in computers!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Liquid-Metal Cooling Loop Technology for CPU and processor cooling,
for laptops, desktops, servers, and graphics cards
The ever increasing demands put on cooling solutions for semiconductor devices have never been greater than today and there are no indications that these requirements will diminish in the future. With higher power dissipation due to higher speed processors, ever increasing leakage losses and extremely high heat flux densities due to hot spots on the chip, the demand for advanced cooling solutions continues to increase.
Until recently the demand for advanced cooling solutions was reserved for a small fraction of the ICs produced. Today these needs are becoming pervasive. New CPUs in almost every application are starting to require more than just a heat sink and a fan, and the need is not just with the CPU. In a modern portable computer or server there are several different heat sources that require advanced cooling. One can easily imagine a CPU, GPU, power supply, and other heat sources that need to be cooled.
nanoCoolers has developed a unique approach to cooling these high power heat sources. Cooling with liquid metals has been used for decades in the nuclear reactor industry, but never before have the systems been miniaturized and developed specifically for computer cooling. nanoCoolers has developed solutions to address the high heat source issues for portable computers, desktop computers, servers and other electronic applications. Within each of these categories are specialized situations that have additional needs, such as the elevated temperature requirements for ruggedized computers, or the overclocking requirements from gamers. nanoCoolers' advanced liquid metal cooling solutions address each of these concerns.
Processor Cooling and CPU Cooling for Portable Computing
Each application has issues with high heat flux densities and high power dissipation, but each also has their own unique issues that need to be addressed. nanoCoolers' solution for portable computers not only solves the power dissipation and high heat flux densities with the use of a highly thermally conductive liquid metal but also allows the system to be completely orientation independent. Since our solution is a completely filled and sealed unit, there are no gravitational effects on the thermal solution and therefore on the computer itself. Our electromagnetic pump, consisting of magnets and electrodes allows for extremely small pumps with a variety of profiles. Since the pump has no moving parts, it is inherently reliable. In the future, advanced cooling solutions will be required in portable computers for cooling CPUs, GPUs, other ICs, power supplies and even fuel cells. Our technology lets the system designer determine how many heat sources they would like to cool and at what remote location they would like to dissipate the heat. Another trend for portable computers is to make the computer thinner. nanoCoolers' heat exchangers can be made extremely thin to allow for these design challenges. The heat can be efficiently removed from the heat source and then transported to a remote location where it can be rejected to ambient air. Finally, one of the most important issues with a portable computer is the battery life of the unit. nanoCoolers' thermal solution is not only very power efficient, it could also be designed to vary based on the amount of cooling needed. If the system is idling, the current to the pump could be reduced or even shut off. However, if the CPU is running at 100%, the pump current could be increased for maximum cooling. These attributes allow for system designers to be able to design the very best portable solution available.
CPU Cooling and Graphics Card Cooling for Desktop Computing
Desktop computers have many of the same issues as all CPU driven devices; high power dissipation and high heat densities. Our desktop solution solves the most demanding thermal requirements. Desktop solutions might not be as concerned about power efficiencies,
They use liquid sodium metal in nuclear reactors. you do NOT want this in your computer.
love is just extroverted narcissism
This actually was first used at Los Alamos in part of the bomb project in WW II - see John Mcfees book "the curve of binding energy".
I don't expect the slashdot editors to live in poverty but I think having three slashvertissments one after the other is really pushing it. This one even goes directly to a sales pitch with a sales contact at the bottom...
Mother is the best bet and don't let Satan draw you too fast.
I am going to move into outer space and have my computer run in the cold vacuum of space. Think about it, no dust particles to gummy up the works.
Ads for nerds, stuff that pays.
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
...what happens when our heatsink tries to kill John Connor?
I actually went ahead and read TFA, at least the linked one.
Although there was talk of "high tech this" and "required for the future" type crap, there really wasn't a whole lot of meat to the story.
Maybe I missed the link that actually describes what kind of metals they're using, how the pump actually works (it's magnets! doesn't count) and what types of temperatures they're able to achieve relative to other liquid cooling methods.
Could someone please fill in the other half of this submission, this time with less Sales pitch and more Info?
I just hope that the Tx1000 will not come around my PCs one night to reclaim its parts ...
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
G1:So.. how do you cool your machine? I use water cooling.
G2:Ha!! I use alcohol based cooling so that if I get a leak I do not get a short in the system
G3:your both losers.. I use Liquid Sodium.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Put all your Terminator 2 jokes here, please.
Nathan
Try synthetic turf. It's a proven technology, used for years because its rugged construction is so hard to distinguish from real grass roots.
Don't go smacking your computer the next time you get pissed off, or it's likely to morph itself into a sword and stab you through the head.
However, I very much doubt that sodium will be the metal of choice for CPU cooling, no matter how popular it is in submarines. The obvious candidates are mercury and gallium. Mercury is rapidly falling out of favor because it is so toxic and, if you spill it and it gets under the floorboards it is floor removal time. Gallium is a little expensive.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Sodium filled valves are nothing new in IC engines.
Bored with water cooling?
Bite your tongue! How in the world could anyone ever get bored with cooling CPUs with water? I've thrown dozens of water-cooled-CPU-themed parties in the last several years and my guests have never wanted for excitement!
Once there was this time at one of the parties that this one CPU got up to 68 degrees celcius. Way too hot! We put a custom water cooler job on that guy and got it down to 45 degrees celcius in no time. Good times.
How could you ever be bored!?
I'm a big tall mofo.
Until the liquid metal escapes out of the cooling system and turns into Robert Patrick.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
There are more than a couple of low-melting-temp alloys that could work. Edmund Scientific had one that would melt in your hand from mere body heat.
High geek factor, too. Where are the T2 references, though?
You're looking for quotes? See my journal.
No... mercury is JUST the thing! I mean... think of it... not only are you overclocking your PC to the extreme, but you are using a cooling system that is so extreme, it can kill people! I tell you, geeks will trip all over themselves for this one! :)
It cant form complex machines, guns and explosives have chemicals, moving parts, it doesn't work that way, but it can form solid metal shapes. Knives and stabbing weapons and uhh....pc cooling.
I sure hope that's what IceFool^Ht's server is cooled with. Slashdotted.
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
Unless they are using a very unusual metal I doubt they can beat liquid nitrogen..
Lower temp means less resistance and less noise.
Hmm, I really think this is a red herring. MG
Graphite is used as a nuclear reaction moderator :
Whilst the graphite moderator caught fire and other Western designs use water instead, it wasn't a coolant.
In another news, a minature steam turbine was announced. This turbine, in combination with the cooling system, allows you to do something useful with the excessive heat, i.e. like powering your PC! ;-)
Yes, graphite, that well known metal...
I hope you don't ever use polystyrene, after that Shuttle crash showed how dangerous it can be.
Ydco co
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)
ian
Mod parent up. Slashdot just advertized a product that is almost guaranteed to be hazardous to your health. And it goes against recent trends to have LESS lead and mercury in electronics (ah, but who cares about the environment anyway).
Graphite is not a metal; its a form of carbon. Chernobyl was a bad Russian design, based on graphite as the moderator and IIRC gas as the coolant, not based on liquid metal at all.
Many American reactors do use pressurized water, not liquid sodium, for cooling. The primary (really "hot" in both senses) loop runs at several hundred degrees, but pressure keeps it from boiling. There's also the Boiling Water reactor design, which does indeed let the primary water boil and generate steam, which condenses in the heat exchanger and is returned as a liquid.
Gallium melts around room temperature.
It's most likely Galinstan, a metal alloy developed by Geratherm to replace mercury in medical thermometers.
In the case of a cooling system, the heat flux will be higher than with water or alcohol (heatpipe...). The specific heat's waaay lower, but the thermal conductivity (as in the rate the heat's absorbed or dissipated...) is much, much higher. So, if you have a decent convective flow via thermosiphon or by way of pumping, it becomes this very extended air-cooled heatsink.
You won't be overclocking with this stuff unless you couple it with something like Peltiers or Vapor-phase, but you CAN make a decent quiet PC with it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
haven't we foobar'd the environment enough? i don't know of anyone important enough to require more leaky chemicals, heavy metals, or organic-life-form incompatible carbon nanotubes so they can run games faster.
Why would mercury have a greater risk of leakage than water? Obviously, your computer would be wrecked if either leaked but I assume that the reason nobody has used mercury so far is that it does need extra protection. They'd hardly be allowed to sell it if it were THAT hazardous, so it must be sealed securely. Besides, my thermometer has mercury in it (yes, real mercury, not red liquid) and that doesn't need four inches of insulation to stop a leak.
I thought that Moderators are what Slashdot needs to keep CommanderTaco from posting advertisments with no meat.
Think global, act loco
Mercury is the only elemental metal that is liquid at room temp. There are other liquid metals. Someone in another post mentioned gallium, as being liquid at just about human body temp, which would certainly be maintained within the cooling process of a PC. Additionally there are other elemental metals with low enough melting points that they would be concievable within a tight cooling loop that runs at a higher temp.
The key for using liquid metal in this as I see it, is to move heat away quickly, rather than moving large amounts. As such the metal itself would stay rather hot, and they would take advantage of the conductive properties of it, to get the heat away more rapidly. The loop containing the liquid metal would likely be localized to an area right around the chip you are cooling. No long pump and hose loops like in water cooling. Think of this more like heat pipe technology, but using a fluid to more efficiently move the heat energy.
OK guys. Can we have 1 news story before you post the next 3 ads? Thanks.
I mean, if ever there is a leak, all you need to clean it up is a bit of Water!...
Aggies
Sodium's not liquid at room temps or anywhere near water's boiling point. However, having said this, there's alloys to be used that ARE liquid at room temp- and that they're non-toxic, and have little in the way of obnoxious behaviors (though they DO have some obnoxious characteristics...). About all I'll say about the subject for now...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Either that or we should start installing nuclear reactors in computers! :-D
I remember hearing a few years ago that we will soon get to the point where the cores of the CPUs would be hotter than the interior of a nuclear reactor. So, that may just be a serious solution after all!
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Gallium would be liquid at CPU operating temperatures as well. You'd only have to keep the radiator slightly above room temperature to maintain a complete loop of liquid.
A Bismuth alloy of
Bismuth 49%
Lead 18%
Tin 12%
Indium 21%
has a melting point of 58%C
it could be used safely and is widely available
no need for liquid sodium pity.
Not true, there are other metals that would work. For example, gallium melts at about 30C (and is even naturally occuring in the body).
As someone posted elsewhere, gallium melts around 30C/84F and an alloy of gallium, indium, and tin (don't have the %s handy) will melt below the freezing point of water!
Graphite is a) not a liquid and b) not a metal.
.info domain used for a legit site? Who knew?)
Graphite was present in Chernobyl, but it was used as a moderator. The coolant was our good friend h2o.
http://www.chernobyl.info/ has great info (The
In the early days of commercial radio these alloys were used as a conductive form to secure galena or other semiconductors for use as the detector in 'crystal' radio sets. Low melting point avoided damage to the mineral.
They are also used in making for many low temp(so as not to damage the mold) casting of patterns from a single rubber(latex) mold for use in making mold 'trees'.
I'm sure there are some /. readers who know of other uses for 'Woods' metal?
Let us know...
Actually they do not give any details about the metal. What they do is mention that the pump has no moving parts and works electromagnetically. Mercury is diamagnetic . I guess this makes it unsuitable for moving along the cooling circuit in this manner.
If you're cooling a nuclear reactor using a liquid metal system filled with a solid non-metal (such as graphite), your nuclear reactor probably will go the way of Chernobyl...
Is this really necessary?
A most overlooked advantage to owning a computer is if they foul up there's no law against wacking them around a bit.
It might work... after all the liquid metal cyborg in T2 was a very COOL guy! (This joke was awful!)
Chernobyl is water cooled. Graphite is neither a metal or a liquid.
You may be, and you are. Good grief, I mean, have you seen any complex solutions to the pencil-lead-liquifying-at-room-temperature problem? No? There's a reason for that.
No indications of it diminishing? Obviously they missed the AMD posting yesterday http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05
Nobody ever gives consideration to Eutetic alloys of Gallium...
Do a google search on Galinstan or Geratherm.
You'll find you were wrong about the mercury.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Yes you are wrong.
1 Graphite is not a liquid or a metal. It is a form of carbon. Typically uses for pencil lead.
2 Graphite is not used for cooling it is used as a neutron moderator. It slows neutrons so that they are more likely to be captured and cause an atom to fission.
3 Chernobyl was water cooled.
4. The Chernobyl did not show anything about liquid metal cooling. It did show that containment buildings should not be considered optional. Graphite moderated reactors have more than a few safety issues.
Now Russia has had some fun with liquid metal cooled reactors. The Alpha class subs used them. If you ever shut them down the froze solid and would never work again. I hear that they have solved this issue.
The US used a liquid metal cooled reactor on the second SSN made. The USS Seawolf. It had to many problems and was replaced with a water cooled reactor. BTW this USS Seawolf was retired many years ago. There is a new USS Seawolf and it has always used a water cooled reactor.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
So, just how HOT is your computer?
In addition to the other (correct) points you make, the specific heat (in J/(g*K)) may be lower, but the heat capacity (in J/K) isn't. Since most of these systems are probably volume/area limited instead of mass limited, I'd consider heat capacity more relevant, and reveals an even greater advantage for metals. I'd use J/(g*L) or something like that if you want to use specific heat, that way you consider the higher density of metals.
Usually "shutting down" an nucular reactor isn't the big problem ;)
Cooling with liquid, in flux or stasis, would be inefficient within a transistor based environment, since it is more important to quickly dissipate small amounts of heat, then slowly dissipate immense amounts. The simplest way to upgrade a water/ethynol based cooler is to replace the coolent with two parts high performance synthetic engine oil (high lubricity dyno nascar oil is best) and 1 part synthetic stasis thinning agent. While it cannot absorb as much energy as metal (1/1000th that of copper) it dissipates it many hundred times faster, and will obviously not conduct a charge. The downside is it requires a 5 psi tested sealed system, since it can leak through even airtight connections.
Also magnetic flow operated sodium sinks tend to polarize contact points over time (the reason that dusted and secured used plutonium rods form a distinctive magnetic nickel finish) which unless I'm mistaken would invalidate gates on a microprocessor.
The metals themselves are non-toxic, liquid at room temperature when alloyed the way they are. You collect the damn stuff and re-use it. It's that simple.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
IIRC, the specific heat of water is around 4 while most metals are around 1. This means it takes 4x the amount of heat energy to raise water by 1 degree than to raise a similar metal by 1 degree.
therefore, what is the benefit of metal cooling?
Just because they used it to cool nuclear reactors, doesn't mean its good for computer cooling.
This is just sig!
"Putting Mercury in a CPU cooler would probably have a high risk of leakage, and killing ppl with mercury poisoning." ... and sharp stabbing weapons.
"Derp de derp."
Seek and ye shall find!
Pretty Graphics Included (tm)!
http://www.frigprim.com/articels4/LiqMetal.html
It's bad enough with a water-cooled system that a leak could destroy your machine. Before I invest in a liquid-cooling system, I want to use a material that isn't going to be potentially harmful to my components. 3M does make a solution, but it costs 320 dollars per litre. I can only imagine what a liquid-metal spray would do to some of my components.
Informatus Technologicus
The mirrored page is: http://mirrordot.org/stories/92ef8a0112fc3c6954dc6 da4f4c405b5/index.html
IIRC cesium melts at close to room temperature. A CPU could easily hit that temperature. Mercury would be good if it weren't for the whole "highly poisonous" thing.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
http://www.nanocoolers.com.nyud.net:8090/products_ cooling.php
and
http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/92ef8a0112fc3c695 4dc6da4f4c405b5/index.html
Firefox &
How about vaporising a liquid?
It's the most efficient way to transport heat in terms of joules per kg coolant.
Think about a pot of water. It takes much less time to bring a pot of water to the boil than to boil off the same amount of water. And while the water is boiling, it stays at the boiling point (with constant pressure) since all energy is going towards vaporizing the liquid.
Seems to me the best choice would be to just choose some liquid like, say, methanol (boiling point 65 C/150 F) and let it boil on the processor and have a condensation loop and reservoir.
The people running the reactor wanted to set what would happen in a kind of worst case condition. There was an tank full of extra water in case of emergencies, but it required power off the grid to run it, so they decided to see if the reactor itself could provide the power if there was a problem and they were cut off from the gird.
Long story short, the water in the reactor began boiling off too quickly to effectively cool the reaction, which cause it to over heat, which DID NOT lead to a meltdown, the pressure built so high that there was a steam explosion before it was hot enough for a meltdown. Of couse, the steam explosion set of a graphite explosion... and between the two a bunch of radiation was released into the surrounding area.
As far as I know, the second explosion was the only part of Chernobyl where the presence of graphite played a major role, but I could be wrong, this is mostly on the spot research off Google...
As I understand it, the advantage for liquid metal cooling in nuclear reactors is the high operating temperature. For an ideal Carnot heat engine, a larger deltaT leads to a more efficient engine.
In the case of a processor, I don't see any clear advantage. As far as room temperature liquid coolants are concerned, water is hard to beat because it has an unusually high heat capacity.
Did you not even read the article you linked to?
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Its a long time since I've done my physics (and I haven't read the article!), but metals are conductors, so surely (unless we are talking about a large volume of metal being circulated such as in the nuclear reactors mentioned in other posts) solid metal is conducting heat away anyway. Water (or air) are insulators, so they need to circulate to remove the heat, but I would have thought a solid metal heatsink (which is air or water cooled) would be just as good.
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
Sodium (and sometimes potassium) is used inside high-performance automobile engine pistons and valves to transfer heat from the surface of the piston to the skirts (or the valve face to the stem), where the heat can be shed to the engine block. Porsche and Mercedes Benz have been doing this for thirty years or more.
Phosphorus and Potassium would also be liquid at CPU operating temperatures.
Chernobyl was a water-cooled graphite-moderated reactor.
There were a few bad things about this design:
1) If the reactor loses all of its coolant, it does not lose its moderator. Thus, losing coolant does not slow the reaction down. In fact, I believe that the Chernobyl reactor had a number of operating regimes where increases in temperature would increase the output power.
2) Graphite is very combustible. Highly flammable materials in an extremely high-temperature environment such as a nuclear reactor is a Bad Idea. Especially in a facility with no containment building whatsoever.
U.S. reactors are very different. Like Chernobyl, they are water-cooled, BUT they are also water-moderated. If they begin losing coolant, the reaction will begin to slow down. There are no highly combustible substances in the reactor core, and even if there were, U.S. reactors have very strong containment buildings so that if something goes horribly wrong, it will not likely ever escape containment.
Liquid-metal reactors have the disadvantage that their coolants are in some cases very reactive, but that's not much of a problem with a strong containment building, especially since some of the liquid-metal reactors are FAR more efficient as far as making use of their fuel and also produce waste that has a much shorter half-life than the waste from pressurized water reactors, making disposal much easier.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Sodium metal melts at 97.8 degrees C. That's pretty damn near water's boiling point of 100 degrees C.
Shouldn't you be doing something useful?
Tired of filling your car's tires with plain old air? Fill them instead with 78% pure nitrogen! The performance advantages cannot be understated.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
They say their magnetic pump (which is a cool idea, if you'll pardon the pun) is "inherently reliable". OK, but it's still there, generating its own heat, and everything breaks eventually.
What if you could avoid having a pump altogether? I imagine the liquid metal coolant has convective properties the same as any other fluid. Probably the metal expands quite a bit with heat, just as mercury does. With proper case design (such as a vertical motherboard), you could probably get good coolant flow without a pump.
O'course, the case might end up needing to be six feet high and require a solid gold heat sink or something.
sigs, as if you care.
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Whatever happened to ammonia liquid-gas phase heat pipes? Doesn't the phase transition beat mere convection?
When my CPU overheats and I have pile of burning graphite in my case, is there someone offering a concrete "sarcophagus" for it?
/.er.
Disclaimer: Despite subject line, submitted by rabidly pro-nuke
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For the record... Water is chemically the best cooling agent available. The reason that liquid metal is used in nuclear reactors is that it's much easier to contain in a closed environment than water because it has a MUCH higher boiling point. For those of you that are concerned about the electroconductivity of your coolant, I suggest mineral oil. Mineral oil is cheap, cools well and above all not electroconductive. Unless, of course, your CPU is generating heats at nuclear levels, then i guess liquid sodium might be the only route.
One interesting thing about using liquid metals is that you would need to make sure that it stayed melted. This is pretty easy with water, but if your metal melts at room temperature, your pipes may freeze/burst and no liquid metal is going to get pumped... The longer your pipes are, the more problematic this could get with metals that melt around room temperature.
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but even best adblock solution wont remove PR and AD articles ...
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Is it just me, or is there an abudnaces of advertisement "stories" today?
A word of advice to would-be advertisers: before you post your ad on the front page, make sure your website can handle the traffic that will be coming your way.
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If I remember high school chemistry correctly, sodium and water make and interesting combination. So, use the sodium based liquid metal cooler on your video card, and a water based cooler on your cpu. Then, wait for leaks and your whole computer will explode! Fun, fun, and more fun! They'll have to print warning labels on computers - WARNING: Do not hit this computer with a large blunt instrument. Serious injury or death may result.
Sodium (or combination of sodium and potassium) is usually the metal of choice when it comes to liquid metal cooled reactors. However, using liquid metal to cool a desktop doesn't seem to be a very safe alternative to water. There are super computer designs that rely on liquid metal to cool the core components. Do a google search and you will see some interesting designs.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
...is more funny comments.
Wouldn't it be great if there were a well known action movie that featured a liquid metal protagonist of some description. That way we could all make jokes about it.
I bet it woudn't matter how many fucking people made the joke - it would just keep on getting funnier and funnier.
yes, liquid metal was actually used exclusively by Russian submarines. They encountered 1 major problem: When the liquid metal became hard under certain conditions it no longer provided cooling. In fact, that architectural design lead to the death of many russian submariners. Oh and, they now use water as cooling.
Lead and cadmium, now that is a good alternative to that toxic mercury! ;-)
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
Then I can ditch both my existing PSU and my UPS... no more power outages for me!
Now I just have to wait for enermax to release their NCLR-PSU001 line of PSU's...
Pfft. Everyone knows that liquid nitrogen just kills liquid metal.
Magnetic pumping of liquid metal is a standard practice. You run a current through the metal in the transverse direction, and put it in a DC magnetic field. This induces a force proportional to the cross product of the field and the current. No moving parts, and no seals to leak.
The whole concept is probably pointless, but quite possible.
If liquid metal was the ticket for super cooling... We would be using it in high performance automotive applications. Last time I checked, my 600 horsepower Bronco still uses regular old coolant.
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DO have some obnoxious characteristics.
Yeah, like eating through Aluminum. Just don't combine Gallium alloy cooling with Aluminum cases! That's a recipe for disaster.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Anyone know the going rate for getting your sales pitch posted as an article? If it's under $50 I think I'll try it myself.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Happy Fun Ball anyone?
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isn't it time you ask yourself, "How badly DO I want to play Doom 3?"?
Can it find Sarah Connor?
Thanks,
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Your pipes wouldn't burst.
One of the unusual properties of water is the solid is less dense than the liquid. So if you freeze a particular volume of water the solid will take more space than the liquid.
In most materials, the solid is more dense than the liquid. So if you freeze a particular volume of liquid metal, the solid will take less space than the liquid.
However, freezing could still be an issue, in that you're not going to be able to dissipate much heat until the entire cooling system is hot enough to melt the metal. That is, unless they choose an alloy that melts at more like 15C.
Thanks for reminding me about a demo that's years old.
I hate to be the person to burst someone's inteL bubble, but AMD's chips do shut off when they reach an unsafe temperature.
What I'm curious about is, what on earth could you be doing that would cause a CPU to get too hot? Why is this such a BIG deal to you?
If I throw a stick, will you go away?
It is when you're on a nuclear submarine in the middle of the ocean...
I don't read AC A human right
How toxic is this "Galinstan" compared to mercury?
It's to keep the computer cool, as in "radical, awesome" cool rather than "frigid, arctic" cool.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
You've got to be some heavy duty overclocker to have the need for liquid metal cooling, and maybe you even need your own nuclear reactor to supply you PC with enough power. Personally i wish there was no need for cooling at all, at least no need for fans or water cooling. Thats why i love Mac's theire silent...
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Nahh, it won't work...I tried to use Liquid Nails to attach my cooler to my Athlon...boy what a show! Who ever knew glue was flammable?
Make America grate again!
Why not just engineer a CPU that can run really hot? I'm no semiconductor expert, but at some point I guess the electrons would start to boil off the semiconductor or otherwise misbehave?
Or standardize the interface to the CPU so you could just hook it up to your hot water heater with standard 3/4" FIPS thread.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Let's put conductive liquid near the motherboard and magnets right next to the hard drive! Extended warranties ahoy!
Sometimes seventeen/Syllables aren't enough to/Express a complete
I thought the common way to mispronounce it was (noo'-kue-ler) not even bush pronounces it (noo'-kye-ler)
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." - H.L. Mencken
Diamond has the highest thermal conductivity of any known substance, and isotopically pure diamond is better then "ordinary" diamond.
So, the best possible heatsink would be an isotopically pure single crystal diamond - and, it is chemically robust, non toxic, and , in a pinch, can be traded for a new video card to run quake..
PS: for the chemically dis-informed, isotopically pure diamond, even if it could be obtained in more then microgram amounts, would be astronomically exspensive
I don't *even* want to think what would happen in case of a coolant leakage. I mean, we know water conducts electricity, but we're talking metal here! (No I didn't RTFA, sorry)
Another promising Austin startup, NanoCoolers, says it is nearly ready to offer evaluation samples of its processor-cooling modules, based on a liquid form of gallium and indium.
An alloy of gallium and indium. It is liquid well below room temperature, with a boiling point in the ballpark of 2000 C.
Another neat trick is that the system has no moving parts. The tubing passes through a magnetic feild. A pair of electrodes stick into the liquid metal and introduce a DC electric current, effectively creating a liquid electromagnet. The electric current through the magnetic feild is exactly the same as single winding of an electric motor - except the motor force is directly on the liquid metal itself. This force pumps the liquid around the cooling loop.
Silent, and no failure prone moving parts.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Each application has issues with high heat flux densities and high power dissipation, but each also has their own unique issues that need to be addressed.
/. should be ashamed of itself.
This is one of those generated articles, right?
If not,
And the answer to your question would be: Yes, I know something more; and apparently you didn't take my advice to google for Geratherm or Galinstan...
: imartinez.etsin.upm.es/lab1/Thermometry/Mercury%25 20problems%2520and%2520alternatives.doc+eutectic+g alinstan+geratherm&hl=en&client=firefox-a : hydrogen.physik.uni-wuppertal.de/publications/rsi7 3031564.pdf+eutectic+galinstan+cooling&hl=en&clien t=firefox-a
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:YP4EjsayVjQJ
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:llknBUqBdLgJ
http://www.geratherm.com/en/technologie_galinstan
Those were what was pulled up from a Google query of "galinstan cooling". Had you used the suggested search topics that I gave, you'd have found the same things I did. It solidifies at -4 deg F. Don't you think that it would work rather well in place of mercury in a cooling capacity?
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
And it's violently reactive with pretty much everything in existence. Not useful, and not what they're using. I know for a fact that it's not.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
NO CARRIER
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
This is cool (no pun intended) and scary at the same time. I mean really 10 years from now are we going to see little radioactive signs on computer boxes??? Will we need to keep alarm systems in the home to alert us if there is a core breach on our CPU?? Holy crap the canary grew a 3rd eye, EVERYBODY OUT!!!! :D
Dewser - all around techy "In the immortal words of Socrates - 'I drank what?'"
It will pretty much tin the surface and that's it... If you leak the metal, then YES, it's a real problem. The resultant amalgamation of Aluminum or Magnesium when exposed to water will produce a lot of heat and Aluminum or Magnesium Hydroxide.
I didn't say it wasn't whack (But then, isn't water, oil, alcohol, Liquid Nitrogen or Fluorinert cooling whack too?) it was just that it was feasible and usable for some applications.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
'How toxic is this "Galinstan" compared to mercury?'
Not very toxic at all. That is kind of THE POINT in replacing mercury in thermometers, after all.
From the MSDS
Inhalation: The extremely low vapor pressure of Galinstan makes absorption through inhalation negligible.
Ingestion: No adverse health effect has been observed or reported. Galinstan passes through the digestive system without effect.
Skin: Skin oils may be reduced through continuous contact.
Eyes: Direct contact with the surface of the eye may cause irritation. Eye protection is recommended when potential direct eye contact is possible.
So don't take a bath in it or anything.
-Mark
I can't wait for viruses to create star trek like coolant explosions on personal computers.
OMG TECH SUPPORT BOMBAY! the liquid metal coolant exploded and peeled off half of my face!
MHD pumps work via the Lorentz Force and therefore need electrode contact with the fluid at right angles to the magnetic field.
Keep in mind, that most MHD pumps are at best 30% efficent, so you'll need a little more juice to move something like Galinstan. The only problem with using traditional pumping with something like that is that it wets every surface except things coated with Gallium Oxide and it alloys with most all metals to some small or large extent (You flatly do not want to expose Aluminum or Magnesium to this stuff, it'll rot it like Mercury does...). The only decent pump is going to be a MHD pump or an inductively driven Tesla style pump to begin with. Anything else will get contaminated with the pumped liquid or expose it to eventual oxidization...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Dang. Site won't load up because it's being /.
Real men use phase change coolers as defined by Drexler and Henson in US Patent #4,759,404 also briefly discussed in Section 11.5 of Nanosystems . That is because the heat capacity of solids going to liquids is higher than that of liquids going to gases. Of course the engineering of a system to circulate nanoscale ice cubes within ammonia (or methanol or ethanol) and refreezing the water back into ice cubes in the "condenser" is slightly more difficult than the engineering required for heat pipes.
I think it was sodium cooled, and a sodium explosion was both part of the disaster, and the "disassembly method".
"Ahh mercury, sweetest of the transition metals"
US reactors also have a negative moderator temperature coefficient - which basically means that as the temperature rises, the number of fission reactions decreases. I think it has something to do with the neutron absortion rate.
In a BWR, the boiling action carries the heat produced away - and it also is an integral part of maintaining the reaction. If the pumps stop, the reactor will not run away.
Galinstan(TM) has already been mentioned, but what about Low 117, aka AIM 47, CerroLOW 117, Indalloy 117, or Ostalloy 117?
- Bismuth 44.7%
- Lead 22.6%
- Tin 8.3%
- Cadmium 5.3%
- Indium 19.1%
melts at 117F (47C). If that's too low, this site has other variations. Low 136 (58C) has no Cadmium, which has to be a good thing for safety in this application, eh?
(this is not a
Chernobyl was indeed moderated by graphite, but the graphite was quite solid until the unfortunate incident. (insert burst of satire particles here) For history buffs, Enrico Fermi used graphite in his first reactor under the stands of the stadium at the University of Chicago. Quite stable, but very messy.
That is not 'they stuff to which [I] refer'. It's called Fluorinert [PDF DataSheet]. Fluroinert has a typical boiling point of about 215 degrees Celcius. 3M developed it, and this Hampton Research company apparently resells it.
Informatus Technologicus
... how the pump actually works (it's magnets! doesn't count) ...
It's probably a sea engine:
http://www.rexresearch.com/emships/empship.htm
It works like magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) in reverse. Another way to think of it is as a rail gun with a liquid projectile.
A magnetic field is applied to a tube full of liquid, and electrodes are used to cause current to flow perpendicular to that. The result is a net force perpendicular to both the magnetic field and the electric current.
The actual sea engine uses alternating current, but the principle is similar.
On the Alpha it was. If the reactor was allowed to cool enough the liquid metal coolant would be come solid metal. The reactor could never be restarted. The the USSR considered them "single use" reactors. They could not be refueled. The Soviet navy setup docks with steam plants, that would heat the reactor/coolant loop enough to keep the metal liquid. This proved too dangerous so they just kept the reactors running all the time.
The Alpha turned out to be a very expensive failure. They where fast and could dive deep but they where loud, broke down a lot, and only useful for scaring the daylights out of the USN.
They ended up being the Navy's Mig25.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
We might see G5 powerbooks yet ;)
From what I know, the only thing thats holding Apple back from using the new high-performence IBM PPC processors in a laptop is the tremendous amount of heat they produce. Could this be the solution?
~You laugh because I'm different, I laugh because I'm insane~
Sodium's not liquid at room temps or anywhere near water's boiling point.
That's true. Anywhere near boiling water Sodium is more explosive than liquid.
-Adam
D'oh! Forgot about that :-]
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
It wets the surfaces of anything, including glass and plastic, but stuff like Gallium Oxide. A thin coating of GaO2 is present in the new non-mercury thermometers so you can actually read them.
All in all, it's obnoxious, but it's not anywhere near as bad as NaK alloys or liquid Na- there's a good reason why they abandoned that stuff as it'd attack almost anything in existence in short term. Same goes for Mercury- save that it's pretty damn toxic in addition to being an aggressive metal.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
One almost as bad as the Cadmium. Worse yet, you have to maintain 136 deg F or hotter or it solidifies. Galinstan's about the only one that's liquid at room temp and is non-toxic and boils at around 2000 deg F.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
...that a CPU would cook at 100 deg C. Most of them are rated to about 150-160 deg F. The reason why one uses water is that it's cheaper than the alternatives, has the highest heat capacity and specific heat for the amount of trouble you have to go through to use it.
Nice idea, but it won't work out the way you think it will- the water will heat up to the failure point of the CPU before ever hitting the boiling point- unless you lower the vapor pressure of the system, and then you've got issues with that as well. (The reason that you don't see water based refrigeration systems is not that water's a bad refrigerant- it's just that it's swept volume is exponentially higher than Freons, etc. posssess.)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
It's NOT going to be cheap. Though I wouldn't expect that you'd need a pint of this stuff to achieve your desired cooling system. I'd think you could use something along the lines of about 200-400g of the alloy and get a decent cooling system. Not cheap, by any stretch of the imagination, but it could allow you to quietly air-cool some hot CPU or GPU all the same.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
If the pumps stop, the reactor will not run away (as the fission stops due to lack of moderation) but this does not guarantee safety! There is enough heat generated by decay of fission products in spent fuel that the core gets red-hot and melts without cooling in matter of minutes.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
Why not just use a liquid-vapor phase evaporative cooling cycle?
Software piracy is victimless theft.
In general a negative void coefficient. It has something to do with the slowing down length. The average logarithmic energy decrement will remain constant IIRC, but you have a lower density of water(hydrogen) atoms. Once the temperature increases significantly, the effects of increased resonance absorption may also become significant.
I am writing this response on the box with two Athlons, cooled by acetone thermosyphons (thermosyphon is a heat pipe without a wick -- it relies on gravity instead of surface tension).
Actually the box where Firefox is running, is a 1u server with both thermosyphons squeezed into 1.75", and I am sitting in front of an ancient P3-450 that I use as a "thin client".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
(burning karma)
I LOVE it when I have the 10th post and I'm redundant. Wow, I must try awfully hard. Good job, mods. Keep slashbotting.
Jay | http://oldos.org
http://alsos.wlu.edu/information.asp?id2=1857&past =2
:)
m l
Fermi I was a Liquid-Metal Fast-Breeder reactor (LMFBR) that had part of its core melt down when a cooling pipe was obstructed by a metal plate that broke off.
Since the cooling medium was liquid sodium, which "reacts" with air or water, any breach of the reactor would likely be followed by a fire or explosion.
And since it was a fast-breeder it contained weapons-grade plutonium. Any explosion could be followed by low-level nuclear detonation.
How likely this is is subject to debate, so don't take it as a sure thing.
And we make our containment building pretty tough so there's no guarantee that the reactor would be breeched either.
But since Detroit was nearby (downwind?) hence the book and the song...
Proponents of nuclear power will tell you that only two rods out of its 100 melted. What they don't say is that several rods warped, making them hard(er) to remove (there are no control rods in a LMFBR so you moderate it by removing fuel rods) and these remaining fuel rods were in danger of melting as well.
It was a pretty close call.
Keep in mind that Chernobyl "only" lost some of its rods, nor did it have a nuclear detonation either. In any case, you wouldn't want to live next door
http://www.nuke.hun.edu.tr/english/links/lmfbr.ht
I dream in binary.
After checking out their liquid-metal pages, I happened to visit their magnets page; I couldn't believe how much they were charging for neodymium magnets. Jeez... call or surf to All Magnetics in Anaheim, CA, and you can get those same magnets straight from the horse's mouth for a fraction of what scitoys.com is demanding. If scitoys' liguid metal pricing is as unfair as for their magnets, go somewhere else to get the stuff.
I only know about the magnet pricing and All Magnetics because I bought a magnetic cat door recently, anf the mfr. wanted $15 apiece for extra collar triggers (cheap little plastic shell with a magnet, that would eventually break apart and disgorge the magnet). I decided I could make better for less, and I did.
No, they were light water-cooled graphite reactors.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
I had thought of this along with a friend/colleague last year and ended up concerned about specific heat. .08 cal/g-C (at 25C) and thermal conductivity of 0.11 cal/s-cm-C. Water has a specific Heat value of 1.00! But it's thermal conductivity is 2 logs lower at 0.015. All in all, I decided that they cancel themselves out. The elctromagnetic motor may be the key to MOVING the heat and giving one that 1/2 log or better difference in cooling.
:(
I had calculated that a gallium/Indium ratio of 75.5%/24.5% which has a known melting point of 15.7C and density of 6.35 would have a specific Heat of
BTW...It's a little annoying to see people questioning the usefulness of such a device and questioning whether it is "overkill". It is not overkill as the "typical" high-end cpu generates 100W of power in an area the size of your pinky finger's nail. by definition, the more transistors they pack...the higher it will go. Water and fans and aluminum/copper heatsinks just aren't going to cut it during this next log increase in transistor density.
Also, nickel should tolerate the mixture fairly well. At least long enough to for today's throw-away computer society. I don't know about you guys but I swap my setup every 8 months!
my first two cents on slashdot.
You are right. The American submarine nuclear powerplants that have been blessed by the Navy's review process, do not include liquid sodium (or sodium/potassium mixture) coolants. I don't believe that there are any liquid metal cooled designs still commissioned either. All of the designs are liquid water cooled designs. Amazing how the sealed units are placed in the hulls of the submarines. The main problem with having a sodium metal cooled reactor design on a naval vessel is the violent reaction that sodium has when exposed to water. If the Nuclear Regulatory body for the U.S were to operate at the same efficiency and with the same practice as the regulatory agency for the DON then we would have a workable nuclear power option. The DON definitely knows what it is doing when it comes to reactor design approval! I'm not familiar with Soviet Naval vessel reactor designs. I do know that they had issues with fuel cell design and control. But, I was never aware of issues surrounding the reactor's cooling process.
While some might argue that a desktop wouldn't be exposed to water, the sodium could leak and be exposed to water. Not a safe situation.
To know is to have knowledge....to understand is to be enlightened.
Convection just hasn't got anything on phase-change heat transfer.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
As part of some research work I was doing for the Spallation Neutron Source (http://www.sns.gov/) here in Oak Ridge, I ran across a lot of information about the nature of liquid metal cooling systems. I will try and list them for you all: 1) Magnetically driven pumps are inefficient, on the order of about 1% total pump efficiency 2) Liquid Metals (especially Mercury) have cavitation problems with use traditional centrifugal pumps. 3) Liquid metals are not as terribly corrosive as you all have suggested. Mercury and GIT (a eutectic alloy of Gallium, Indium and Tin) will operate for a very long time in Stainless steel. 5) A GIT alloy is probably the best bet for a design utilizing a liquid metal. If it were to be allowed to come in contact with the chip (I.E. reduced overall thermal resistance) it would form an oxide layer with excellent heat transfer capabilities. I would Love to see some people do some research into this problem as it seems to me to be very interesting. I am in the middle to using GIT to enhance the function of a sensor I am working on and already it has yielded heat transfer far superior to any type of ceramic or oxide mixture.