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."

Comments

Re:This can't be good.

[yotto]

Considering they said it's environmentally safe, I doubt it's mercury. Considering it's intended to /cool/ your gpu, I doubt it's molten lead.

Even if it were either, why couldn't it be good? 20x the cooling sounds pretty good to me, and if it's safe and environmentally friendly, what's the problem?

Re:More leaks to worry about

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

If you're purchasing a liquid metal cooled video card, you can afford a $50 surge protector or a $200 UPS.

Re:This can't be good.

[Junior J. Junior III]

What state is it in between 6.6C and 7.5C????

Re:new video card

[sinner0423]

Uhh, no. The first terminator was looking for sarah conner. The second, which looked like liquid metal, was actually looking for both John & Sarah when it went back in time.

This IS news for nerds, you knew that right? Sorry to nitpick, but I figured you may know why the mods deemed this funny.

Note ads always mention the UP side:

[Ancient_Hacker]

Yep, Gallium does indeed conduct heat many times better than water. Too bad that's not a relevant parameter here.

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.

environmentally safe? Too short a history....

[davidwr]

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.