Tell You What Technology Can Do

Danish company Danamics has invented the coolest (in both senses) CPU cooler ever. It achieves this not with boring old moving air, or even dull H2O. No, the LM10 uses liquid metal: Think T1000 in your PC.

Danamics claims that the cooler is more efficient than just pumping water over the components. Unfortunately, the site only mentions "liquid metal" and not any specific kind of metal. The Wikipedia tells us that there are five metallic elements which are liquid at room temperature:

rubidium (melting point 39 °C, 102 °F)

francium (27 °C, 81 °F)

mercury (−39 °C, −38 °F)

caesium (28 °C, 83 °F)

gallium (30 °C, 86 °F)

For cooling purposes, it looks like mercury would be beast suited as it can get colder without solidifying. I dug into the specific heat capacities over at the Wikipedia, too, but my high school physics is all but forgotten. Can anybody tell us if liquid metal is both a better conductor of heat and also more able to suck up and store that heat?

The actual pump mechanism is interesting, too. Instead of propellers or impellers, the metal is moved by electromagnetic induction. Danamics claims, again without details, that its "patent pending multi-string electromagnetic pump" will use a lot less power than conventional electromagnetic pumps.

If the LM10 ever makes it into the shops, we'll see if it works or if it is just another fancy novelty device aimed at the overclocker market. Either way, it will probably be very expensive, but at least it will make your motherboard look like Arnie's Hog in Terminator 2.