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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,
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
Best of luck trying to get rid of the heat. Remember, convection won't work, only radiation.
Ydco co
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
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
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
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
They use liquid sodium metal in nuclear reactors. you do NOT want this in your computer.
Maybe YOU don't want liquid sodium metal in your computer. I think it would be beyond cool, especially when the unit reaches end-of-life and it's disposal time.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
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
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.
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...
Put all your Terminator 2 jokes here, please.
Can't think of any at the moment... but I'll be back!
There is nothing more practical than a good abstract theory.
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.
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.
They use liquid sodium metal...
;-)
I'll just have to take this idea with a grain of salt
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!
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.
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.
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?
Now look what you've done. The moment you added your Cl, the idea pool went sterile.
Congratulations.
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
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.
but even best adblock solution wont remove PR and AD articles ...
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
Best of luck trying to get rid of the heat. Remember, convection won't work, only radiation.
/. readers here. Oh well, you know what they say, "it's not what you know, it's who you know".
Silly, convection couldn't work because there is no real "up" in space. You know? Heat rises? I therefore propose the use of fans. Imagine how fast the fans could spin in the vacume of space!!! They would be much more effective "up there" than down here with all this inefficient "atmosphere" crap. The fans could also redundantly double for propulsion when needed.
Why has NASA not thought of these things? NASA really ought to be hiring real geniuses like many of the other gifted
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
Wait, you want to replace mercury with a metal that reacts violently with oxygen and water vapor in an explosion and which reacts with water vapor to form the strongest base known. CsOH is caustic enough to go through glass and will go through metals. IIRC, the only safe way to store cesium is to keep it in a glass ampule under a vaccuum or an argon atmoshphere.
I would stick to the mercury, at least with mercury you can use EDTA or some other chelating agent to sequester it and counteract mercury poisoning.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Radiative heat transfer isnt as bad as you think, its a function of T^4, whereas convection is a function of T^1.
The background of space is aproximately 4 degrees kelvin. So running your computer at room temperature (~304 kelvin, lets make numbers easy). 300 to the fourth power is a big number. And we've been doing radiative heat transfer for a long time. In fact, on some missions (for example, Voyager) they had to install resistive heaters to keep the compters warm enough to keep them running because it was so cold.
IAAAE. (I Am An Aerospace Engineer).
-Philski-
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.
It explodes on contact with water. Or almost anything else for that matter.
The sodium binds with the -OH in water to produce NaOH, a powerfully corrosive base. This happens to releases a hell of a lot of heat. It also happens to release a hell of a lot of gaseous hydrogen (H2O minus OH leaves H). Hydrogen+heat, kaboom.
If you take a lump of solid sodium metal and toss it into a lake it will sink for a moment, reacting as described. In a split second it explodes throwning the chunk of metal back up into the air - possibly at a random angle. It falls back into the water (assuming it didn't hit you in the face) and repeats. I've heard it can easily go on for 15 minutes or a half hour.
Splash-BOOM.... up it goes... down it comes...
Splash-BOOM.... up it goes... down it comes...
Splash-BOOM....
Metallic potassium is even better if you can get it. It is even more intensely reactive than sodium, plus the explosion should have a cool purplish color to it.
Hmmm, I just realized somthing... if we're talking about liquid sodium, well tossing that in a lake would damn near detonate all at once rather than a series of blasts. The initial contact and heat and explosion would blast the sodium into a near mist and into the water. Don't try this one at home kids.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Happy Fun Ball anyone?
but the article said if you ever get bored with water cooling
What could me more fun than proven technology - LN2 cooling, that has been used for supercomputers for decades.
The beast : http://www20.tomshardware.com/cpu/20031230/
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
Wait, you want to replace mercury with a metal that reacts violently with oxygen and water vapor in an explosion and which reacts with water vapor to form the strongest base known.
;)
Yes! That way when the MPAA shows up for those MP3's I've been downloading I can hit "The Big Red Button" and *poof*--no more computer.
There's no place like
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.
'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
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
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