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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."
A one slot and nearly-silent top end card.
Nice guess, it's indeed Gallium, as a google search will confirm you.
War doesn't prove who's right, just who's left.
61% Gallium
25% Indium
13% Tin
1% Zinc
Solid at 6.5C
Liquid at 7.6C
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.
--Greg
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.
It'll be between the liquidus and solidus lines, so you'll have a composition of liquid plus some small amount of alpha-phase.
Both liquid and solid: Recrystalizing state.
Oh well, what the hell...
Anyways, there are plenty of metal alloys that are liquid at or slightly above room temperature.
But even discounting alloys, there's are a few other elemental metals other than mercury that are liquid at room temp (assuming your room has a computer or two to keep it warm): Gallium melts at 29.76 degrees C and Cesium at 28.44 degrees (I'd keep the latter far from my computer though). Rubidium melts at 39.31 degrees, so it'd be liquid at the temperatures today's GPUs reach (but I'd keep that far from my computer too).
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, galinstan is liquid at room temperature and quite safe (compared to mercury). I have a vial of it on my desk. fun stuff.
make your own, it is 68.5% Ga, 21.5% In, 10% Sn or you can buy it online.
A cool application is to make a _perfect_ parabolic mirror. You do this by spinning a puddle of it. The centrifugal force pulls it against the sides and is countered by gravity pulling down the center making a perfect mirror for a tesescope always pointing exactly straight up.
http://notanumber.net/
Antec Phantom 350 PSU
Gigabyte 6800 fanless (only 12 pipes, but not a big sacrifice...though if this liquid metal stuff works it should make things easier the next time I upgrade)
Thermalright CPU heatsink with a 120mm fan on a Zalman fan bracket and set at minimum on a Zalman fanmate control.
All in an Antec 3700BQE case with quiet 120mm exhaust fan.
The annoying thing was that as soon as I got rid of one whining or droning noise I'd notice a slightly quieter one... Now, it's inaubible except in dead silence.
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..
Please elaborate on MS DRM being cracked.
It was cracked in Japan and then quickly uncracked.
Rather, any of the phone-home restricted content forced an upgrade of the decrypter that was no longer crackable by the original method. T2 was liberated before the phone-home system had started to push out the new software.
The original method amounted to running the player under a debugger and looking for the decryption keys in a known location in memory, grabbing the keys and then using them to manually decrypt to a file. The new software checks for the presence of a debugger and refuses to run. I'm sure it is only a matter of time before that is also circumvented.
In theory, if you have not accepted an upgrade to the windows media system in the last month or so, all of the "on disc" restricted files could still be liberated. It is reportedly a fairly tedious manual process.
I think there is some discussion of the process on doom9.org if you want to dig deeper.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
" Darn, the T2 joke has already been made *thinks of other joke to get karma..*"
Actually, Humor karma doesn't go on your karma record. Check the faq about karma.