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Liquid Metal Cooling in New ATI Video Card
MellowTigger writes "Water cooling is so passe, definitely 20th-century. What's the 21st-century geek to do to keep his gaming video card cool? Try the liquid metal technology that will be included in the ATI Radeon X850 XT video card using the cooling technology from Sapphire. This material is reported to be non-flammable, non-toxic, environmentally safe... and 65 times more thermally conductive than water."
Whether it's toxic mercury, or molten tin and/or lead, I'm not sure I like the idea of "liquid metal".
Also seeks out John Conner.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
Maybe I'm showing my age, but this really makes me think of Terminator 2, with the early CGI liquid metal cop doing all sorts of naughty things. Who knew? He could have been productively cooling computer parts instead of killing people.
Cool.
* ducks *
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
1. The card runs hotter
2. The card runs faster
3. geek cred points.
I'm voting for 3.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Liquid metal always reminds me of T1000's from Terminator 2.
Perhaps this is just the start... what if all these liquid metal coolers all joined together in an uprising against human kind? Sapphire Technology would have a hell of a lot to answer for!
Liquid metal computer component cooling was discussed here not to long ago. Sorry, I don't have the relavant Slashdot URL handy. I read the previous article just for the Terminator 2 jokes (pertaining liquid metal Terminator T-1000).
When your videocard starts leaking, don't mind the components being destroyed, but worry about a T1000 dripping out of your computer.. from the FAQ: Q: How will I know if my videocard is leaking? A: Ask your parents why "wolfie" is barking and if they answer you while the the dog is actually named "Max" then your videocard is leaking.
How does it work? The little brief on the phys site said that it used an electromagnetic drive suggesting that the metal itself is feromagnetic such as the fluid use in the active dampeners on the corvette but I want to know about the tech. The ue of the vide card is lame and not worth my time at all tell me about the tech. Is there an artical that actually tells me what it is made of? Geez this could be cool but right now its just an advert.
So now I have to worry about memory leaks, security leaks, and liquid metal video card coolant leaks, ahhhh crap, this is all getting way to confusing.
I have enough trouble just keeping everything from blowing up everytime I get nailed by a thunderstorm, last time it was crack/fizz/is that smoke? Whats next, crack/fizz/smoke/drip?
It also doesn't mention if it's non-conducting, when I get struck by lightning 5h1t explodes, wouldn't that be fun to watch as the entire motherboard gets sprayed with a liquid metal conductive material, gaaaaaaa!
Like arts? Like cheesy little Indie mags? Check out www.artwerkmag.com, and don't laugh at the bad coding please.
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According to their website, the "TOXIC X700 PRO" features "Lethal Cooling". I think they need a new marketing department.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
They say it's not flammmable, so it's not the eutectic alloy of sodium and potassium that's liquid at room temperature. It's not toxic, so it's not mercury.
Gallium might be possible since it melts a few degrees over room temperature. It's only mildly toxic but nobody should call it "nontoxic".
Sounds like it could be the perfect ingredient in some high-margin trendy mixed cocktails.
A one slot and nearly-silent top end card.
1. NFPA requires NASCAR style fire extinguisher inside computer case.
2. House wiring must be upgraded and a 440v 3 phase outlet installed next to your computer.
3. Homeowners insurance rider for extreme fire hazard.
4. Fire retardent metal door must be installed between computer room and rest of house.
5. Town must grant zoning variance for indstrial scale use of power in a residence.
6. Special monitor must be installed which notifies the Fire Department when your frame rate exceeds 250.
from the sound of the article, I'd think it was some kind of 'ferrofluid' - a suspension of fine magnetic particles
I always thought that liquid metal was hotter than, say, water.
You have never seen quicksilver? One reason to use it in the thermometers instead of water is that it doesn't freeze at 0 degrees Celcius temperature like water does.
I wonder what kind of liquid metal they're using that is "completely non-toxic." Could it really be metal particles suspended in oil, like some kind of very dilute thermal paste? The only other application of liquid metal cooling I know of is the reactors on Soviet Alfa-Class Submarines, which used a molten lead-bismuth alloy. It allowed them to make small, high-power reactors, but unfortunately, despite attempts by the Soviets to keep the coolent molten with external superheated steam feeds, they had to keep the reactors running 24/7 or the coolent would fall below 125 degrees centigrade, freeze solid and render the reactor useless.
Heh... Liquid metal in the sense of say steel or some other normally solid metal is only hotter than water in the sense that it must absorb a certain amount of heat before it liquifies. There are however some metals that are liquid at low/room temperatures. That being said even though the substance may need to be heated to liquify, the process of heating the substance will draw heat from the source, thus cooling it.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't heat capacity more important than heat conductivity in this case?
The article mentions a special kind of pump with no moving parts, so I assume the liquid is moving around from some sort of radiator to the GPU and back.
Water has the highest value of heat capacity if I'm not mistaken (4186J/KgK), so in case of a moving cooling liquid, the higher the liquid's heat capacity, the less water will have to be moved to move a specific amount of heat.
What does heat conductivity matter, then?
Here's a little bit more info, no word on T1000's involvement.
However, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that owners of this new "metal liquid cooling" at a LAN party ending quite horribly.
I can see it start with a few leaks, the liquid metal all joins together... T1000 lives again...
I'm pretty sure they're using gallium. It melts at 85F, is nontoxic (unlike mercury), and is nonflammable (unlike rubidium, cesium, sodium, and potassium, the only other metals I know of that melt at reasonable temperatures for a graphics card). Gallium also has almost exactly 65 times the thermal conductivity of water.
As it's a liquid metal.. and the only one liquid at temperatures around room temperature to 100 degrees C are lead, mercury and maby a lead tin amalgam.. it's got to be some new thing.
I'm curious about the chemical composistion of this new amalgam, as it must be (unless they're using highly reactive cesium, which I really doubt).
Anyone know any chemical details ?
Is this possible?
Last time I checked molten metal (burning death) and Mercury (deadly poison) was toxic.
AHHH, Nothing like a warm sip of heatsink juice to warm you up on a cold winter night.
Now my graphics card can finally help me use my power line to it's full potential!
--Greg
as much as there's molten rock in lava lamps...
First in the Blizzard range will be the SAPPHIRE Blizzard RADEON X850 XT and Blizzard RADEON X850 XT Platinum Editions. Blizzard delivers the future of gaming with the ability to push blistering frame rates and deliver environments erupting with vibrant colours and highly detailed textures rendered in High-Definition clarity.
Combining Sapphire innovations with game developers' creations, users won't miss a single feature of today's gaming titles. This hardware boasts 16 parallel pixel pipelines, 256MB of GDDR3 memory, and PCI Express interface. From innovative minds working to deliver to users who demand the peak of performance in every aspect of their graphics card, the Sapphire Blizzard RADEON X850 XT Turns the Ordinary into Extraordinary.
Is all this not a little overkill? I mean, really, isn't water-cooling cool enough for people? Certainly, I have a GPU cooled with the good 'ol fan & heatsink combo -- I get damn good performance, pretty close to what they're describing and it didn't cost me the Earth. The noise isn't bad either: it's drowned out many times over by the fans on the PSU.
The other interesting thing to note -- while this may be really useful for the up and coming mini-PCs (think Mac Mini) that need a well cooled (to prevent overheating) and quiet solution -- it'll take up too much space. An extra PCI slot is just a no go when space is at a premium. I'd also love to see this type of technology implemented on mini-PCI slots, where the extra cooling is essential for performance. Now that would be useful.
Maybe if some Nvidia cards start to use this cooler the 6800 Ultra won't need a cooler that blocks the adjacent slot.
Where did the simple video cards go to? (You know, the ones that could be air cooled)
You know John Doe likes gamming too much when they buy a liquid metal cooled video card.
John: Hey Bill, I just bought a liquid metal cooled video card! Now I can play the good games I always wanted to buy!
Bill: But can you buy the games you always wanted?
John: Oops...
Geeze, why does /. keep on linking to physorg, which has crappy articles and no links to real information about stuff.
Here's a more in depth article on X-bit. NanoCoolers has a pretty in depth description of the product. It's basically a watercooling loop but using a molten metal. The really cool part is that because the metal is obviously electrically conductive, they're using a DC current combined with some magnets to take advantage of Lorentz force to propel the fluid.
The liquid metal cooling topic was covered on /. before, eg:/ 03/1421243&tid=222/
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05
The technology probably derives from http://www.nanocoolers.com/products_cooling.php/
Sapphire is just the OEM manufacturer of ATi cards. For quite a while you could only get ATi branded cards but now you can get them from ATi or Sapphire. I doubt they have much to do with the technology besides licensing it.
From TFA
"The revolutionary use of an electromagnetic pump means no internal moving parts, low power consumption and delivers near silent operation. "
Near-silent? What is making the noise then?
Nah, it will have to reach a temperature close to the melting point to actually absorb heat in any other way than an ice cube may absorb heat when its -5 centigrades. You can't get a higher temperature in the coolant than in the "colee", so to cool by the phase transition itself, you'll need the colee to reach the melting point of the metal. That will also be needed if one is going to get a pump going by magnetic forces, which seems to be the idea here. If it stays solid, it will only be a fancy, encased, heatsink.
Plasmavania.
I remember that Russian nuclear submarines used to use liquid metal instead of water to cool their reactors which was a really bad idea because the metal would become much more radioactive than water and because the metal could cool and solidify, causing a clog.
"And in other news, nVidia announced that their upcomming 8000 series is going to feature a NeuralNet CPU, which is a learning processor. Finally, gamers can get their cards to behave exactly the way they want to..."
The X-bit link says that the "metal" used is patented, so it's not pure gallium like I thought - it must be an alloy, probably the gallium-indium mentioned in a couple other posts.
Did some research, found the following two patents:
T O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=nanocoolers&OS=nanoc oolers&RS=nanocoolers
T O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =2&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=nanocoolers&OS=nanoc oolers&RS=nanocoolers
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
And
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
It looks like they're using a Gallium/Indium (rare elements) alloy. This is certainly not environmentally safe from a chemical point of view as these are toxic heavy metals. I think by environmentally safe they are pointing to the "sealed" system that they are advertising. That is, they dont exepect the systems to leak, as they do not require any refilling.
Basically, their argument appears to be that it's safe because it cant get out, just like coolant in a nuclear reactor. This is actually a reasonable claim, however, we shouldnt take it to mean that the liquid metal coolant itself is evironmentally sound, just that the system, while in operation, is.
P.S. it appears they've also experimented w/ Lead/Bismuth, mercury, and Sodium/Potassium alloys.
Yeah, PhysOrg is clearly a marketing front for PR releases with any sort of science-y edge to them.
See Paul Graham's already classic The Submarine for details on how this crap works.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
When I first saw that they were using liquid metal, my first thought was "Why?!" Water has a gigantic heat capacity, and is in may ways the Ideal Coolant.
But then I saw: "Electromagnetic pump with no moving parts." So it looks like they're sacrificing some of the coolant properties of water so that they can use something very electrically-conductive, and gain the advantage of silent operation.
That said, IIRC there are no-moving-parts water pumps that use electrochemical effects (something with electrolysis and dragging ions through the water), but I've always assumed that they're limited to small flow rates.
Now I want to know how this no-moving-parts liquid-metal-pump works. Maybe use a square-cross-sectioned pipe with an insulating top and bottom and conductive sides; pass a current between the sides, and put large permanent magnets above and below? Or do it linear-induction-motor style? Hmmm...
Based on the earbursting noise produced by my current computer, I've pretty much decided that the next one I build is going to be as silent as possible. Maybe we won't have to give up graphics power for silence.
Ceci n'est pas une sig
With a cooling loop, you'd like a liquid that can carry a lot of heat per trip and doesnt get too hot in doing so. Water gobbles up a whole kilocalorie per cc for each degree. gallium is dreadful by comparison-- it has a FIFTEEN times poorer specific heat, so it either goes up 15 degrees per cc as it passes the GPU, or the pump has to put out 15 times the flow rate to give the same cooling rate as plain old H20.
Good old H20.
But what about the thermal properties of metals? All metals and alloys (except invar) expand upon heating. Wouldn't that cause problems if the interior temperature became excessively hot?
cooling a video card? Oh yeah? Well, can it find Sarah Connor?
Transfering heat over a short distance conductivity is more important than capacity - because getting the heat IN and OUT of the coolant is the bigger issue.
Transfering heat over a long distance capacity is more important than conductivity, because you're physically moving the coolant far away. What you really want in this case is high capacity and low viscosity - for a cooling setup like this "how much work the pump has to do" is probably more important than "what volume of coolant does it use" In very small spaces water has a very high viscosity due to surface tension related effects. (IIRC, basically because it's bipolar) That's why you should always have antifreeze in your car, even in the summer - the water pump can't handle pure water.
While I'm not sure, I doubt water has the highest heat capacity bar none. This application certainly qualifies as a "short distance"
Water is usually used so prevalently for industrial heat transfer for the combination of high capacity, low toxicity and extremely low coolant cost.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
A silent magnetic pump.
Gee, does this mean we could take this and put it on a submarine and have our own Red October?
No, wait.. We need our own sub-launched ballistic missiles....
Shucks.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
This opens the door for cooling systems based on knives and stabbing weapons.
This has been used inside aircraft engine exhaust valves since the 1930's. Liquid Sodium would be sealed inside the valve. It's non-toxic and is still used today.
The buzz of the high voltage lines powering it.
Moo!
As far as I know, it's only in liquid form when above 20' degrees celcius.
Was this modded as flamebait because there is no "-1 stupid" option, or because mod points are only given to idiots?
In the advent of a snow storm and a loss of power your comp might go below the freezing point you would be out a $500 graphic card. no a good i dea if you live some where cold and blizzard prone
Although it might be "environmentally safe" insofar as the leaked metal is not toxic, it's still far from being environmentally friendly. The fact that a graphics card needs liquid metal cooling is cause for concern.
Efficient cooling just means transferring the heat generated away from the card more rapidly - the energy input is still high, with all the negative consequences of that (cost, pollution, geopolitical instability, etc.). What we should really be demanding is more efficient systems that don't waste so much energy in the first place. Still, the Mac mini is a step forward in that regard (although not in the same graphics league, I concede).
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
non-flammable, non-toxic, environmentally safe
Yeah, they said that about water too but stupid college students die from it every few years anyways.
Seriously, this is cool stuff but any new substance should be considered at least slightly suspect until long-term dangers are known. That's not to say we shouldn't use it, only that we should be intellectually honest with ourselves.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Please give an example of something that is absolutely without use.
I would assume that they're using some kind of an alloy that has a lower freezing temperature. One possibility is an alloy of gallium, indium, and tin (also known as Galinstan) which has a freezing point of -20 degrees centigrade.
..wayne..
How Cool!
Couldn't they focus more on producing chips that DON'T generate so much heat?
That way we wouldn't need to spend another N bucks on the cooling system.
This is the lamest comment section, that I have seen in a long time.
/.ers but its true. No one read the article much less the comments. Is slashdot sinking? Is it dead? Or just the mentality of the posters.
Sorry,
Love,
Fellow Poster
Specific Heat is the amount of thermal energy a certain material can absorb, per mass, whilst raising by a certain temperature. A material with a low specific heat will become hotter, quicker, especially if coupled with improved conduction.
This means that the coolant will be hotter, which will give improved transfer at the heatsink. All round, a good deal.
I think. I'm failing my degree at the moment, so I wouldn't take this as gospel.
...that would rather see this technology in a CPU cooler (and maybe also in my PSU, as that's damned loud) than in a videocard?
Then I could run a turbo without a heavy intercooler.
Overclocked PCs as lava lamps using real lava...
"So Dave, any idea if you can knock your cpu down a few cycles? The tremors are rattling my windows and keeping my kids up at night and the pyroclastic flow last week incinerated the fence, my garage, and my fishing boat. I know that building a Doom 3 terminal server capable of hosting five million players in real time is important to you, but..."
Speaking of which, go read Eric K. Drexler's Engines of Creation regarding the kind of cooling that some nanocomputers would require. Pipes with flows of many gallons per minute, superheated high pressure steam being output...
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
...which melts at an even lower temperature
u id_metal/liquid_metal.html
See also:
http://www.scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/thermo/liq
( kudos to venkeroz on tweakers.net for that link in a post on this story 4 days ago )
you're posting on slashdot... you can't have a girlfriend, as it's against the rules!
....in many areas of science. We use it to connect electrodes to oxide ceramics for high temperature impedance testing, effectively applying it as a type of solder.
The reason we use it is because it has as a very strong "wetting" action (it will even wet glass) and so forms an electrical connection with almost anything, and its stable over an enormous temperature range. And if it doesn't evaporate at the temperatures we use (>500C) then you definitely don't need to worry about poisonous fumes from your graphics card.
The thing i'm confused about is why its not being used in place of the bloody awful heatsink gunk we religiously spread over our CPU's. A suitably thin layer of GaIn alloy would give much better heat transfer properties and wouldn't dry out like thermal paste does. And unless you poured buckets of the stuff on the cpu there wouldn't be any problem with leakage onto your motherboard cos the surface tension would hold it in place (a redesign of the H/S would solve this anyway).
Oh, and it really isn't that toxic - those safety sheets are a sad reflection of an increasingly stupid and litigious US society. As an example - take Titanium Dioxide (TiO2). A "suspected carcinogen" which is used in household paint pigments, toothpaste and is even the "icing sugar" on really cheap cakes...
So the First Post's author is scared for a reason:
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What I wonder is where the fan is... They are moving the heat away from the core silently, but that heat has to go somewhere, and in general, that means a fan.
All in all, isn't this just a heatpump with some new marketing-driven name for the liquid inside?
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
this cooling system is not going to be included with the X850 XT. The company that makes the cooling system will be offering a modded version of the X850 XT called the Blizzard X850 XT that will incorporate this technology. Similar to how BFG has made custom cooled GeForce cards for a while now.
There is a slide deck on this website
http://www.techpowerup.com/?3105
http://fudge.org
I dunno, it just seems somewhat ...wrong...when our computers are running SO HOT they need liquid cooling of any type. This is not the way it's meant to be.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
i mean if liquid cooling is 20th century, what about fans. sure would love to ditch the noisy pronged spinning devices in favorite of this liquid metal stuff for the cpu.
Mike
I heart the RIAA & MPAA, im sure its mutual...
I saw that but didn't buy it, since when you're actively pumping coolant, I was under the impression that you didn't really need a ton of conductivity in anything but the heat exchangers.
The Russians used liquid metal cooling in their nuclear subs. It was efficient, but unfortunately the liquid metal carried the radiation well, and all cooling tubes had to bne coated in lead along with the reactor itse;f
Also look for Magnetohydrodynamics for a better explanation of the physics.
Cool stuff indeed.
u id_metal/liquid_metal.html
http://www.scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/thermo/liq
Say something's wrong with the card and in my infinite wisdom I decide to take a screwdriver to it, pry it open, and fix it. Will it try to defend itself like other hardware?
Note that this uses electromagnetic induction to move the coolant. Caterpillar drive, anyone? "Are those torpedo doors?"
Is this something that could potentially be used by Apple for the PowerBook G5? They are going to have to do something different to make it all work inside the 1" case.
There seem to be a lot of "WTF?? electromagnetic pump w/no moving parts?!?" posts here and while I do not know the intricate details of this particuar implementation I STRONGLY suspect that a casual perusal of the science behind the Einstein-Szilard refrigerators would prove highly informative.... Its a bizarre and almost unknown chapter in the history of safe refrigeration techniques.... and Einstein's life for that matter!
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
...the fucking article is light on details. It just says it's non-toxic, non-flammable and environmentally friendly, but it's not water. Hmmm... that rules out Mercury because that's certainly toxic and not environmentally friendly. But it's the only "liquid metal" I could think of. They've either discovered new matter, or it's just a marketroid name for some other chemical. The only other thing I can think of that is liquid, non-toxic (by some accounts anyway although I have my doubts), and environmentally friendly is, well... um... piss. Holy cow, I hope that's not what Liquid Metal is. ;p
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I think it would be awesome if that instead of internal pumps, all heat producing parts of your computer were connected by tubes to a big freakin radiator, and this stuff was used. I reliaze that to accomplish this, a standard way of connecting would have to be used, and ALL manufacturs would have to think that everyone had a case like this. Given I don't know the viscosity of this stuff, it could change computer cooling forever. Espicaly if your computer was was a double hull design and no fans were needed at all...... just fins.....
Screw my karma.
A computer crash would be so much more entertaining if it were traced to a pinhole leak in a liquid-sodium-cooled video card.
Molten metal thermal conduction has been used for nuclear submarine propulsion for decades:
Sister ship to the USN SSN Nautilus in the mid-50's (used liquid hot sodium) and the soviet Alpha class of titanium submarines (used liquid lead-bizmuth).
Boht occasions were major failures, big pain in the ass with unreliable and dangerous equipment.
"Where do you want your computer to melt down today?"
or
"China syndrome" now playing in a PC near you!
(which would be just right, because all PC are now made in China).
Am I the only one who thinks an electromagnetic pump sounds like a really bad idea inside a PC?
First post seems to have slipped through your fingers.
The potential cooling of the Nintendo Revolution which will be using an ATI video chip? Small and quiet......
I've wanted a DB bus about the house, particularly the kitchen counter and bathroom, for eons. So many little appliances that would be useful.
.
I could extend this to the whole house for computers . .
hawk
Why wouldn't be something easily available like this Bismuth Alloy available at Small Parts. They have the greatest stuff for building things.
Jelly state.
Thanks for the link.
You mentioned Einstein, and for a second I thought you were referreing to Bose-Eienstein and refrigeration. Talk about freezer-burn.
I wonder how the cooling will be while the gallium is still solid in parts of the system that are still below 85 F, like right after you switch on...
Than H2O.
First of all the substance is Gallinstan, if it was pure Gallium it would corrode away whatever they put it in unless it was teflon coated, but then you can kiss your head conductivity goodbye.
Water has the highest heat capacity of any natural substance, there are others that serve different purposes (I use Dowfrost in my loop), but water is still the best in most cases.
Just because the head conductivity is 65x (Sapphire-speak) its thermal capacity is horrible (12x less than water). Now whoever said that capacity is not very important is wrong. These cards pump out heat like there is no tomorrow, and you would have to 1) Pump 12x as fast to get to WATER-comparable temperatures EXTRACTED from the core, and you would have to have a fan running fast in order to cool that liquid as its flying through the loop (we are talking over a 1000gph is necessary for effective cooling of Ga).
Also, this cooling is not that much "better" than water because you will still never acheive below ambient temperatures, it is a physical impossibility, so whats the point on spending so much on this junk (it would cost you in the realm of 500$ to fill a loop with it) when water will work JUST as well, even better, and you still have silent cooling available (MCP 350 anyone?) and its dirt cheap (200$ will get you an entire quality loop, easy!).
These are just heatpipes on steroids, you can't use a pelt because it would freeze the metal, the pump is expensive and needs rare earth metals in order to create enough of a field to actually spin and pump this stuff through...
All in all its just marketing. Gallium is a super cool metal to play with, but cooling with substances other than water or water based products is still pointless, as water has the highest natural heat capacity.