Liquid metal cooling

[thomas2000]

The title of this article led me to think Asus will be using liquid metal as a coolant in a CLC system. That's not it, but makes me think if it would be possible / had any benefits. From what Roman said in his recent video the reaction with copper affects only a surface layer and doesn't eat into the metal. Otherwise, nickel coating the fins and the rad from the inside should be possible. 

 

It should be beneficial to have higher thermal conductivity liquid, right? 

 

https://www.digit.in/news/laptops/asus-rog-strix-scar-and-strix-g-series-gaming-laptops-55802.html

[manikyath]

with a notable lack of knowledge on the matter, i'd still dare state that the benefits of pumping around gallium in a CLC do not outweigh the costs of the materials and required engineering when compared to water or other chemical coolant solutions.

[MkaiL]

The limiting factor in liquid cooling is not the liquid used to transfer the heat to the radiators, but the amount of energy the radiators can dissipate using air. The fluid is not actually cooling the system, it just transfers the heat so we can have a larger surface area to still air-cool the liquid itself. Changing out the liquid, which is again not the limiting factor, won't improve temps since you'll still have the same radiator surface area dissipating the same amount of energy.

[shoutingsteve]

water has the highest specific heat of an (common) liquid.  It makes the most sense to use it in cooling systems.
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-fluids-d_151.html

[Mike.jpg]

shoutingsteve is correct. Galliums specific heat is only  0.37 J/g K, water is 4.19 J/g K. Using gallium will result in higher fluid temps for the same volume of liquid as water. In order to produce the same results as water cooling, you would need more volume of gallium, larger radiator and more flow. Ammonia has higher specific heat, but would be much more expensive than just building a larger watercooling setup. 

 

If you want to change working fluid you could explore a compressible gas and turn your water cooling loop into a refrigeration loop. Replace cool air with CPU/GPU block. and insulate this block so that only heat is transferred between processor and gas.