Can you replace "Liquid Water"(in water cooling) with "Liquid Metal"?

[GoldenLag]

Just now, _d0nut said:

Looking it up it says 

Ag(Silver) 428 W/m-K

Cu(Copper) 401 W/m-K

Au(Gold) 318 W/m-K

 

would be cool to see a manufacturer selling a 400$ or more silver cooler. either liquid or air. 

 

because why not. 

[boey]

1 hour ago, GoldenLag said:

would be cool to see a manufacturer selling a 400$ or more silver cooler. either liquid or air. 

 

because why not. 

Difference between copper and aluminium when making heatsink fins is minimal, some company(noctua?) tested it i think. they said it provided virtually no thermal gains and was super heavy, and super expensive to manufacture. Off the top of my head aluminium is 200ish W/m-K so I'd guess Silver vs Aluminium wouldn't make much of a difference. 

[GoldenLag]

1 minute ago, _d0nut said:

Difference between copper and aluminium when making heatsink fins is minimal, some company(noctua?) tested it i think. they said it provided virtually no thermal gains and was super heavy, and super expensive to manufacture. Off the top of my head aluminium is 200ish W/m-K so I'd guess Silver vs Aluminium wouldn't make much of a difference. 

i was aware its practically pointless. but its purely a "why not" reasoning

[boey]

Just now, GoldenLag said:

i was aware its practically pointless. but its purely a "why not" reasoning

I think the closest to a retail product with a non-aluminium fin heatsink is

http://www.zalman.com/contents/products/view.html?no=441

shitty downdraft cooler though.

[Joey Kapish]

Okay but (going back to my second question), the question about "Liquid Metal" in a laptop. If you take a small Q-tip/paint brush and applied "Liquid Metal" all along the heatpipes and maybe re-sealed the heatpipes in some type of protective (I don't know for example) adhesive or electric tape or silicon (or whatever they use), wouldn't that (in theory) make for better thermals?

[fabafaba]

10 hours ago, GoldenLag said:

Mercury would work fine, but its also mercury. You know the thing that isnt good for you. 

Mercury would also be a pain in the rear because it forms amalgams with all sorts of metals, including these used in watercooling components:

• Aluminum. Actually looks quite pretty

• Copper. That was used in dental fillings because it solidifies
• Nickel. Coating your copper waterblocks gets you nothing with mercury, it reacts with that too
• Zinc. Zinc is in brass, so forget most of your fittings

And a whole bunch of others. The elemts in orange form amalgams with mercury. Most iron alloys would be okay though.

1 hour ago, Jason Greene said:

If you take a small Q-tip/paint brush and applied "Liquid Metal" all along the heatpipes and maybe re-sealed the heatpipes [...], wouldn't that (in theory) make for better thermals?

It wouldn't make a real difference. Copper is about 5 times as conductive as liquid metal TIMs with 380W/mK vs 73W/mK for Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut, so even though you'd have more metal transferring heat from one end to the other, it's five times worse than what you already have. You also can't apply liquid metal very thick without spending a small fortune, and a few fractions of a mm around a heatpipe just aren't worth it.

[Joey Kapish]

15 minutes ago, fabafaba said:

Mercury would also be a pain in the rear because it forms amalgams with all sorts of metals, including these used in watercooling components:

• Aluminum. Actually looks quite pretty

• Copper. That was used in dental fillings because it solidifies
• Nickel. Coating your copper waterblocks gets you nothing with mercury, it reacts with that too
• Zinc. Zinc is in brass, so forget most of your fittings

And a whole bunch of others. The elemts in orange form amalgams with mercury. Most iron alloys would be okay though.

It wouldn't make a real difference. Copper is about 5 times as conductive as liquid metal TIMs with 380W/mK vs 73W/mK for Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut, so even though you'd have more metal transferring heat from one end to the other, it's five times worse than what you already have. You also can't apply liquid metal very thick without spending a small fortune, and a few fractions of a mm around a heatpipe just aren't worth it.

Ohhhhhh I forgot to mention (it's in my other topic about fan noise within laptops) in regards to db levels. I meant to ask if you applied "Liquid Metal" along the heatpipes wouldn't that reduce the need for the fans to run as loud/much?

[fabafaba]

1 minute ago, Jason Greene said:

Ohhhhhh I forgot to mention (it's in my other topic about fan noise within laptops) in regards to db levels. I meant to ask if you applied "Liquid Metal" along the heatpipes wouldn't that reduce the need for the fans to run as loud/much?

As I said, it wouldn't make a difference if you coat the heatpipes in liquid metal because you can't apply it in a large enough amount. If you'd apply liquid metal between the CPU and the cooler, you'd get better temps or lower noise, depending on your laptops fancurve.