This Cooler Ruined an entire Company - LMX Liquid Metal Cooler

[@der8auer-en]

Yesterday evening I even realized that there is no way to recycle or dispose this cooler in a normal way. Luckily we have a chemical recycling company we work with at Grizzly so I will just give it to them. Isn't it insane that a normal customer would have to deal with that?

[@Phos9]

Oh that might be the reason why these never got out, they made a CPU heat sink that managed to violate every RoHS regulation at once.

[@savclaudiu2133]

Please reconsider and look if you can find a tech museum or somebody who wants the cooler in their collection. Is by far one on the most advanced cooler around, and the amount of engineering put in it seems ridiculous, I mean you don't see everyday an magnetohydrodynamic pump!

[@agentcrm]

See if they can drain the and clean the cooler. It's an interesting piece to keep on the shelf once it's safe.

[@medes5597]

​@@savclaudiu2133they're not that rare, he doesn't need to do that.

[@station240]

If you do scrap the cooler, could you send the controller/PSU to either: Kaizer Power Electronics (Denmark) or The Post Apocalyptic Inventor (Köln Germany) They like having this sort of thing to teardown/repurpose.

[@AaronShenghao]

The NaK is exactly what was used to cool some nuclear reactors. Reason being they can with stand 200+ without problem while water would boiled. And unlike water that can act as moderator, NaK don't have a big effect on the chain reaction. So unless you have a nuclear reactor in your PC... you don't need one...

[@gelo1238]

There are PWR for some reason

[@rossclutterbuck1060]

"So unless you have a nuclear reactor in your PC... you don't need one..." so the perfect cooler for a 13900K then

[@Ryan-re1rs]

You ever see a 4090! That's pretty close buddy!

[@ahmetrefikeryilmaz4432]

@@rossclutterbuck1060 I came to say exactly what you said.

[@mc-not_escher]

>Implying modern processors don’t produce the same thermal output of nuclear reactors. I wasn’t born yesterday, bub.

[@КОМБИНАТ-т1ъ]

Liquid natrium is used as a coolant in fast neutron nuclear reactors. Indium-gallium alloy pipelines require much different technology of soldering it's pipes, due to alloy's ability to dissolve metals

[@sihamhamda47]

Also NaK is much much cheaper to make, as sodium and potassium can easily found in sea water, while gallium can only be found in aluminum ore with average concentration of ~18 ppm

[@tomaszszupryczynski5453]

yeah but such alloys are liquid to 785 degrees celsius, and they are used to cooldown something to 100-200 degrees probably not pc to 30 degrees. same as car optimum working temp to burn less fuel is 90 degrees, so still 10 less before in worse case scenario when you have to fill radiator with bottled water. did that many times in company with shared cars. either i will put my drinking water in radiator or wait till engine will cooldown. cos i didnt had coolant

[@Scorry]

@@tomaszszupryczynski5453 , bullshit. Na-K eutectics starts from -11,4 °C.

[@RowOfMushyTiT]

I like how you said Natrium.

[@copperfield3629]

NaK alloy was used as a reactor coolant at the UK's Fast Breeder Reactor at Dounreay....

[@PyromancerRift]

This is perfect for a danger build. With a gigabyte PSU, a pentium 4 overclocked, an rtx 480

[@franchocou]

Asus or msi mobo & overclock management

[@jimbodee4043]

😅

[@analogicparadox]

RTX 480?

[@dudeonlygamingandotherstuf7791]

Ah yes, the RTX 480, easily the gpu of all time.

[@EternalxFrost]

I'd say the GTX295 instead, which is essentially 2 GTX480 chips running on the same PCB. Recipe for smoke, essentially.

[@jesperlammert6634]

So I have 3 of these coolers here at home. They did go on sale at danish retailers, I believe I got mine at proshop. They had 19 in stock when I purchased mine. I remember because they went on sale and I wanted to buy their full stock, but waiting for an email response got it down to 3 and I just purchased those from the online store. If I remember correctly Danamics was a danish company, and at the time the Antec 920v4 just came out, and as a reviewer I reviewed that 120mm liquid cooler against this LMX. The results was that the 920v4 just barely came out ahead. So at the time this cooler was actually great, and I still have one that I have in a system that I use, for a time it was my daily as well. However the cooler was so heavy that they had to make a superleggera version of it, because it would bend motherboards. I was actually thinking of writing to you and ship one your way given that I am in Denmark and I thought these were pretty cool. I also want to mention that they did come with fans. All 3 of mine have the same brand (I don't remember the brand) fan with orange light, and they can run up to about 3.000 RPM if needed, they are pretty decent quality and still runs just fine after all these years. The wires do get hot pretty quick, but never too hot. In a case with airflow it isn't bad at all. As far as degrading goes, I haven't seen any. I see no performance issues on mine still, and the metal is still very shiny. The way you installed the noctua fan is the intended way, it says so in the manual for it, I still have the original boxes and everything for them. Just those rubber stuff around the mounting holes on Noctua fans was never intended to be on. Overall this cooler was my go to. I remember clocking a 2500K to 5.3GHz on this one, and running at the absolute thermal limit of that chip, but the Antec 920v4 never had a chance of doing that, it would thermal throttle basically immidiately.

[@savclaudiu2133]

Please reconsider and look if you can find a tech museum or somebody who wants the cooler in their collection. Is by far one on the most advanced cooler around, and the amount of engineering put in it seems ridiculous, I mean you don't see everyday an magnetohydrodynamic pump!

[@nazgu1]

Exactly my thoughts! As unsafe as this thing can be, it is a rare example of truly thinking outside the box, and it should be remembered for that.

[@gelo1238]

he probably doesnt care about others xD

[@OptimalToast]

@@gelo1238 Or cares enough to destroy it and not be a burden on his mind and anyone else's. Either could be true. 😃

[@marcogenovesi8570]

@@gelo1238 yeah he is a war criminal

[@qdaniele97]

​@@nazgu1It's not really unsafe, no more than any LiPo battery pack fully charged. Even if you managed to rupture one of the pipes (which wouldn't be that easy at all, dropping it would barely bend them) it's unlikely the sudium-potassium alloy would actually catch fire (unless you tore it apart and then drop it in water).

[@WouterVerbruggen]

This is -most likely- an electrohydrodynamic pump. These work by passing a current through the (conductive) liquid perpendicular to the flow which is exposed to a dipole magnetic field in the other perpindicular direction. The lorentz force on the flow is the driving force, basically a liquid railgun. This also means there are no moving (mechanical) parts in the pump, so it is no suprise that it still works well. Btw heatpipes work so well because the water inside goes through a phase change. The thermal conductivity is thus not at all important for it's performance. And in water cooling loops it is all about convection, so again the transport medium thermal conductivity is not important.

[@leafydialupking1]

You’re correct. The wires are going into a coil around the block, basically half a transformer. That’s why it’s pulling 30amps, it’s basically a short circuit. I’m kind of surprised/impressed that it wasn’t so electricly noisy that it didn’t make a hum or hiss on the audio recording.

[@WouterVerbruggen]

@@leafydialupking1 There is no coil, the field is produced by permanent magnets which are held by that clamp thing (which is actually shielding and guiding the flux more efficiently) on top. Making an electromagnet for this application would be very inefficient and at 30 amps it would require more power than the CPU its cooling. As for noise, this is a DC application, so the only noise would come from the power converter board

[@nazgu1]

"Liquid Railgun" would've been a much better name for this cooler :)

[@leafydialupking1]

@@WouterVerbruggen I would think for it to be a Lorentz force pump that the wires would be perpendicular to the magnetic shield, since the current needs to move perpendicular to the magnetic field and parallel to the direction of flow. And in that case the inverter module must include a current clamp since the pump would have very low resistance.

[@WouterVerbruggen]

@@leafydialupking1 The current flows throught the liquid metal from one side of the channel to the other, the lorentz force pushes on the fluid directly. So with the liquid flow as reference, the magnetic field is top to bottom, current from left to right and thus force in the direction of the flow. The electical "short" is the low resistance of the liquid metal, which I would guestimate to be in the 100 nOhm range so you'd need some expensive equipement to measure that directly.

[@RANDOMNATION907]

A valiant attempt at innovation. Now we know. I think they deserve credit for trying something genuinely original.

[@Deja117]

There's thinking outside the box, and then there's releasing something to the public that could cause them permanent skin damage, lung damage, environmental damage to wildlife... Most postal services won't even let you deliver products with NaK in them as it's that much of a hazard, more often than not you need to order them from qualified suppliers. Yes technically the unit is sealed and the same could be said for batteries... But this is a liquid that can leak if those pipes aren't solid.

[@sinephase]

shouldn't have ever gone past the lab though LOL I'm sure it'd be a decent type of cooling for very specialized applications

[@05Matz]

@@sinephase IIRC this kind of cooling (on a much larger scale) is already used in some nuclear reactors? I guess in situations where non-metals would boil, and you can't allow gallium on-site because it could corrode critical components, NaK starts to become a reasonable option as a heat-transfer media?

[@copperfield3629]

@@05Matz Right, I know it was used in the "Fast Breeder Reactor" at Dounreay in Scotland.

[@sinephase]

@@05Matz from what I've been reading a eutectic alloy has worse viscosity as well. They didn't choose sodium for nothing.

[@Thomas-Larsen]

I think I remember seeing the Danamics LMX for sale at Danish retailer ProShop Edit: Yep, found it on their site in a snapshot from back in December of 2010.

[@der8auer-en]

Ah that explains how some of them made it to the retail market. Thanks!

[@Asasz6]

Comparing specific heat capacity of this liquid metal to water is largely pointless as an approximation of usefulness - the ways the liquids are used are completely different. Most of energy transfer in heat pipes is done by absorbing and releasing heat in the phase change (assuming ~50K delta from ambient the enthalpy of vaporization would be around 10 times the energy required to heat the water by this delta in the first place). In the liquid metal case, the advantage is obviously supposed to come from the volume of the coolant it can cycle. Thermal conductivity is quite important then, as the faster the coolant cycles through the cold plate (and through the fin stack) the faster it has to take/release the heat. In other words, thermal conductivity is putting an upper bound on useful flow rate, which directly limits the effectiveness of the cooler. I think the theoretical limits of this setup are actually better than heat pipes, but it requires insane rates of flow (which is why the pump is eating so much power), and I wouldn't want to be anywhere near a thing that accelerates NaK to speeds it would need to cool better than heat pipes. Or just accelerates NaK, to be honest.

[@cdburner5911]

I don't think you are correct on thermal conductivity. At least, partially. You either need to look at the whole system in a more abstract way, or look at the heat transfer, surface conditions, and flow inside the tubes. Looking at the whole system, assuming ideal mixing of coolant in the tubes, you have mass flow and delta T. Mass flow (not volume flow) is a product of flow velocity and density, and delta T is governed by mass flow, heat input, and specific heat (assuming no phase change). Liquid metals have a much lower specific heat, so you need a much higher mass flow. With mercury and gallium based liquid metals, it is somewhat offset by a higher density than water, bringing the volumetric flow to reasonable levels. However, eutectic NaK is less dense than water, so you need a much higher volumetric flow to match the performance of water as a coolant. If you look at the surface conditions and the flow, you want a high surface surface area, and enough turbulence to mix the fluid. With enough surface area and turbulence, the thermal conductivity of the fluid basically doesn't matter. Hence very fine microfins and jet plates on water blocks. In round tubes, as seen here, its quite possible the improved thermal conductivity of NaK helps performance, unless there are some form of heat-pipe-esque surface on the inside of the tubes on the waterblock side. Also, pretty sure the 'pump' is a magnetohydrodynamic pump, based on what appears to be a giant electromagnet, and very high current. I am by no means an expert on that kind of pump, but my understanding is its basically a 'railgun' for fluid. Now, I though it had to be really long to get meaningful flow, so I could be wrong, but I don't see why you would need 30+A of presumably low voltage to power a normal pump.

[@jaro6985]

How is it pointless? Compare it to a regular water cooler with a pump, which it is similar to.

[@05Matz]

Were overclocked CPUs of the day capable of operating above 100C? That would be my first guess as to what would possess somebody to miniaturize NaK reactor cooling for PCs, but there still should have been some kind of... oil or something they could have come up with in between! @@LiveType

[@Asasz6]

​@@cdburner5911 Of course, thermal conductivity is not the only important part, but in this case, I still believe it is quite important - you have to take into account that water would require more fiddly pipes (surface area) and a different pump to push through those fiddly pipes (since the overall volume is much smaller than 'normal' water cooling and you are explicitly not relying on the latent heat of phase change to transfer heat away from the coldplate) which means a lot higher pressure, which would require thicker pipes (...). This makes it not obvious whether NaK would be worse with those specific constraints before you test it - you may observe that AIOs require a completely different setup. Assuming the pump in this setup is the limiting factor (looking at its power usage, that's a fair assumption) as long as you want to have a compact MHD pump with no moving parts, water would be a worse coolant - besides everything else, your pump limits mass flow, so lower density as long as the pipes sizes work, is not an issue. It's maybe even beneficial, as it gives you larger pipes in the fin stack, which (assuming sufficient thermal mixing of the coolant) would increase heat transfer to the fin stack (up to a point). And that all is besides the fact you would probably need to use saltwater or other mixture to even use MHD, which would increase corrosion, be even less efficient etc. Of course, it turns out that it's cheaper to make small and reasonably efficient propeller pump and have radiator with large internal surface area of the water pipes (that is then slow moving and readily transferring heat). Note that this no longer fits within the footprint of a standard CPU radiator (I have not seen any AIO that fits into standard cpu cooler footprint) and for AIO with comparable performance would most likely want 2x120mm... Which kinda means, this design is not _wrong_ per se, just their assumptions on what are the important constraints were flawed - it turns out violating standard cpu cooler footprint is not such a huge deal, small propeller pumps are cheap and reliable and completely besides that, heat pipes _work well_. Still - was that whole approach worth the effort? Not really, as we can see. But it sure was interesting!

[@Sett86]

It's not pointless if you compare it to (liquid) water cooling. Then again it is, because heat capacity was never a problem in water cooling in the first place.

[@Paxmax]

Not only does water have a better heat capacity, it also undergoes a phase change in heatpipes. The phase change step takes on so much more energy than heating water. Heatpipes also solve a secondary problem compared to water/liquid metal; the boundary layer effect, the best flow/fastest transport of volume/sec. in a liquid cooling loop is in the middle of pipe... the heat exchange though, happens on pipe inner surface where the flow is the poorest. Heatpipes forces the transport of heat along the inner surface. (all modern waterblocks are designed to create as much turbulence as possible to break up boundary layer effect, the liquid metal design here looks like straight pipes thru CPU block, but I could be wrong ofcoz)

[@queueeeee9000]

Can you explain the second problem it solves? I don't quite understand.

[@ezequiellepew9472]

@@queueeeee9000 there it is hahaha read it again xd

[@Paxmax]

@@queueeeee9000 (sorry for a wall of text) Boundary layer effect, when you pump a fluid along a smooth tube, you will get different flow speeds in the tube depending on how close to a tube inner wall you measure. Gas/Water/liq. metal flow creates a drag resistance against tube inner surface. Slow flow near inner surface compared to middle. That sort of creates a layering effect, liquid near wall prefers to travel along the wall. In this liquid metal design, the liquid metal is only getting warmed by the conducted heat transfer from external source at the inner surface of tube. Then, already warm liquid continues to travel slowly along the inner tube while in the center of the tube "cold" liquid rushes past the entire hot area without picking up any heat. Only when the flow is disrupted by a rough surfaces, bend or a shift in inner diameter will there be promotion of mixing the hot "wall fluid" and cold "center fluid". It is possible they have rough surface inside tube to break up these layering effects, impossible to tell without inspection or manufacturer information. I'd guess no. A heatpipe, as used in PC cooling, has different densities inside, one density in middle, other near inner tube surface. Along inner tube wall there are small (sintered) structures that are sparse enough for high volumes of media to pass per second. The opposite is true of the central structure, a denser wick like structure that has an affinity for adhering to liquid: Wick effect. By combining these two structural differences (with low pressure water) it provides several advantages: It promotes high flow of media near inner surface where the heat source is, the sintered sparse structure provides good mixing of media because of the chaotic ways it has to flow. Also because of the phase change from liquid to gas more energy is taken up without heating the water that much. The turning of water into high volumes of gas it will leave the heatpipe hot zone much much faster than a liquid would. Liquid creeps slower in wick towards hot zone, gets hot, turns to gas and zips off to cool area of heatpipe. The volume flow of gas is probably around 1600 times faster compared to the liquid speed in wick, if their respective surface area in tube are equal. As for an approximate real world flow speed or water amount/sec in heatpipes I have no idea, never done any such calculations nor looked it up.

[@queueeeee9000]

@@Paxmax thank you very much for the explanation. That's incredible. I had no idea how much actually goes on inside the pipes. Incredible. How does the wick in the center, stay in the center?

[@Paxmax]

@@queueeeee9000 its a compressed pellets structure that surrounds the denser center structured "wick".

[@cHr1s204]

Would have been interesting to see the results without the pump running versus when it is.

[@tomaszszupryczynski5453]

what for, its not heatpipe, and you know how water cooling works when pump breaks, there is no flow so extreme temp on cpu. heatpipes arent full so water evaporates and then at end coolsdown and returns on side to bottom to repeat process. in water cooling its based on circulation, you need pump to push hot water out and push cold in

[@blar2112]

@@tomaszszupryczynski5453 the liquid metal has a very high thermal conductivity, and unlike water coolers, the tubing on this thing is copper and attached to the fins.

[@cardboardsnail]

@@blar2112 NaK has lower thermal conductivity than aluminum by an order of magnitude. It would make for a horrible cooler if it's not actively pumped. Tubing material is irrelevant in the context of comparing this cooler with a water cooler too, since the actual water-to-radiator interface is still metal to metal. The channels that the water goes through in radiators is metal.

[@blar2112]

@@cardboardsnail the amount of metal in contact with the cpu in a water cooler is tiny, plus it has no direct exchange interface with air. This thing is full metal in direct contact with the cpu and air, i bet without the pump it could handle 80W~ no problem, something impossible with a water cooler.

[@sinephase]

gonna be far worse, like having solid "pipes" and some small convection effects

[@MrMartinSchou]

Something you can do with NaK that you can't do with a water pump, is using an electromagnetic pump. Since it has no moving parts, it will essentially never fail, and it should be borderline silent if not completely silent. It *might* also be cheaper, but I can't speak towards that.

[@bleepbloopblahp]

It has no moving parts, but it requires a fan attached to it that does.

[@megapro125]

regular heat pipes don't have a pump at all they rely entirely on the capillary effect of the sintered copper inside (or copper groves/copper wire mesh if you have a very cheap cooler).

[@Teth47]

It's also an order of magnitude less efficient though...

[@DomiaAbrWyrda]

Interesting

[@diamonddogie]

30A pump

[@super.brunch]

When comparing heat capacity you gotta keep in mind the densities of the materials. If a material has a lower heat capacity, but it’s significantly more dense, it could hold more heat energy for an equivalent volume.

[@Sett86]

Y...yeah but ... but NaK ... NaK has lower density than water (it floats) ... meaning even less heat capacity...

[@Steevo69]

​@FTreba It only "floats" as it's ripping the hydrogen and oxygen apart into gasses, it's almost like a liedenfrost effect.

[@Sett86]

@@Steevo69 Umm, that may very well be, but NaK IS actually about 15% less dense than water.

[@Phos9]

To me, this looks like a case of the lab built prototypes outperforming normal heatpipe coolers but the production versions, surprise, it doesn't work as well. That, or they just got fixated on this concept.

[@sirmonkey1985]

It's also possible that it required a much greater heat output than what cpu's we're putting out back then. Thermalrights giant coolers had that problem with idle temps and low power cpu's.

[@ppsarrakis]

aha i see what you mean,its possible the heat wasnt enought to liquify the "wax" in the pipes so there wasnt good enought circulation i think there where some ASUS cooling systems for GPU that had that issue@@sirmonkey1985

[@robertjung8929]

@@sirmonkey1985 heatpipes have a limit, once you overpower them they stop working (all working fluid evaporated and not able to condense). and this is the only case where i see this NaK stupidity shine because it can't be overpowered as it's not based on phase change of the working liquid.

[@lorenzo42p]

blinded by marketing

[@marsovac]

Considering that in your mounting setup a third of the fan was not pushing air through it, it seems quite good. Should have gone with normal sized memory without RGB to be able to mount the fan properly. Results would be more interesting in a fair comparison.

[@aflury]

The heatsink's controller needs its own heatsink. Good design!

[@Chris-vl7pd]

I love these videos Roman, please dont run out of these obscure products!

[@JaenEngineering]

I'm trying to think if there's anything more dangerous they could have filled it with but i genuinely can't. Even mercury would be safer to handle than NaK. 😮

[@mikehigham23]

Try Lithium, as in batteries. Sodium/Potassium need an oxidant (air/water etc) to react. Charged Lithium batteries can let-go with just heat run-away, oxidant not needed!

[@AKAtheA]

anhydrous ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, cesium, rubidium...there's a lot to choose from...

[@deividasnavickas]

@@AKAtheA the limit is knowledge.

[@concinnus]

@@AKAtheA Ammonia would be the obvious (as in usable) one. It's still used in big commercial refrigeration units.

[@salmiakki5638]

Thanks, now I'm thinking of heat pipes filled with Hydrazine -.-'

[@simonl7784]

9:00 That's probably a magnetohydrodynamic pump! that explains why it's perfectly quiet; the capsule is an expansion chamber

[@JosiahBradley]

I'm so glad you didn't cut this open with a water lance/jet. Never thought a computer device outside a CRT or PSU could be lethal.

[@Spiralem]

NaK (Sodium Potassium) alloy is usually used as a high temperature coolant. Commonly used in nuclear reactor.

[@bpark10001]

The reason they used liquid metal is the ability to pump it without moving parts. The pump is a "magneto-hydrodynamic pump". That supply hakes HUGE current, but at LOW voltage. This current passes through the liquid metal. There has to be a magnetic field (wave some steel around the cooler. You should find strong magnetic fields.) As long as the hot side is lower than the heatsink, heat-pipe scheme is WAY superior. Gravity & boiling/condensing drives the fluid around, so no pump is needed. The heat-of-vaporization is WAY higher then specific heat WITHOUT significant temperature drop. By the way, water is NOT used for heat pipe operating near room temperature. Usually some refrigerant is used which has lower boiling point. Water does not have enough pressure to drive vapor upward near room temperature. That NaK fluid is VERY dangerous as you state!

[@UncleKennysPlace]

Sodium was used for years inside of the exhaust valve stems for petrol engines, to keep the valve cooler.

[@AmstradExin]

A few Nuclear power plants are cooled with pure Sodium (Natrium). Because of the very high boiling point.

[@bmgjet]

Lol I remember wanting that cooler so badly. Its what drove me to my first water cooling setup since I had $150 set aside and then heard that the cooler was canceled so went and bought my first water cooling kit. Crazy thinking back you got a whole kit for $150 where no days your paying $200 just for a single block.

[@randykitchleburger2780]

$200 for a block? Insanity. I ran a custom loop for years but got tired of maintenance and went back to air a few years ago. I had my CPU and GPU cooled and spend just over $350 for EVERYTHING

[@HanSolo__]

It's stupid, it's dangerous, it's very good at cooling and it looks crappy. I love it!

[@marcinmaj848]

IKR?

[@exciting-burp]

The conductivity of the liquid metal is important: that will passively move heat through the pipes. So this setup basically uses both forced convection (the magnetohydrodynamic pump) and conduction. That's probably why it performed better than expected.

[@luxaeterna7095]

Good start to my morning! Hello to all; hope your day goes well! :)

[@fredEVOIX]

the fact this held pretty well on high watts Intel tells me it was over-engineered for it's time, no one needed 200-350w coolers back then

[@RikiHorizon]

worth mentioning, even if this cooler didn't fail catastrophically. If a user wanted to get rid of it they would likely need to contact a chemical disposal specialist, and failing to do so could also lead to violent results. it's a wonder this was ever considered for retail sale.

[@RikiHorizon]

​@@danielrouw2593everything you mentioned people know to handle with care. But a PC cooler filled with a dangerous substance that looks at a glance like any other safe PC cooler is a disaster waiting to happen. Very very strange to defend this useless dangerous product but you do you 👍

[@Teth47]

@@danielrouw2593 I don't think anyone was advocating for making this illegal. Also, leaks and accidents happen, NaK is much more reactive than you give it credit for. If the air is humid it'll burst into flames all on its own. What we're saying is that the company who made this was dumb for making it because while it might have the potential to slightly outperform a heatpipe, a heatpipe is simpler, more robust, safer, cheaper, easier to manufacture, stores better, and doesn't present a disposal hazard. Drano and concentrated soap are what NaK violently reacts to form, after which it begins to react the way you're expecting it to. People like you underestimating the dangers of unfamiliar substances are actually one of the main drivers of nanny state regulation, because you get yourself killed mixing gasoline and styrofoam and your family sues the companies who made them. They then lobby for tighter regulations on substances to lower their legal costs.

[@3800S1]

I was really interested in this cooler back then, but like in the video, they disappeared as soon as there was any kind of review on them.

[@MaidenLoaf]

Chemical engineering major here: at 6:23 you mention heat conductivity being less relevant but you can think of it in terms of electrical conductivity and resistance; heat transfer both into and out of a material depends on it just like how electrical current through a circuit depends on the conductivity of the traces and components. In fact, the theoretical diagrams that were used in the lectures i attended and the textbooks i read use the same resistor symbols. If a material cant conduct heat well, then it means it cant absorb that heat very quickly, even ifnthe heat capacity is favourable. Another way to think about it is: theoretically a battery may be very high capacity but could only produce low currents due to the internal resistance. Put mathematically, the convective heat transfer coefficient is directly proportional to the thermal conductivity

[@adamrak7560]

You can pump NaK without moving parts (the NaK is the moving part, and current is flowing through it), so the pump never wears out.

[@adamrak7560]

so it is like the motor has a single winding with very high current, that is why it needs a beefy power brick.

[@AcM.5233]

Perfect example of "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should"

[@hquest]

Mythbusters have run an episode about "exploding" Sodium and other alkaline metals, using a comically larger quantity than what there is inside the LMX. Yes, alkaline metals can cause minor burns on skin (since skin has water), it can make a nice "pop" sound when surrounded by water, but that's about it. Doesn't explode the toilet (but washes the person using it - thanks 7th grade for the great memories and for providing us with practice "friends"), nor will burn your apartment down. If you want to dispose this small amount, just drop the alkaline metals content in a bucket filled with water. Watch out for splashes and enjoy retaining the "coolest guy in the block" status.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

yeah they are a fire risk not an explosion risk (without some assistence like locking them in an airtight container to make pipe bombs)

[@burlak3182]

And brainiac on discovery channel showed how just small drop of lithium destroys whole bath thub. ... and thunderf00t and periodic tables did videos showing that alkaline metals in wather is not that a big deal afterall...

[@romank90]

Did you measure power draw of the pump? I mean - 30 A isn't neglectible even on 1.5V

[@Teth47]

That pump si actually pretty fascinating. It's solid-state, there are no moving parts inside it to drive the liquid. It uses magnetohydrodynamics to move the NaK through the pipes. Basically, it's a railgun whose projectile is a liquid. They're horrifically inefficient compared to a mechanical pump but have the advantage of not being ruined by NaK, making them suitable for these applications. What a terrible consumer product though.

[@Seizuqi]

thats quite impressive for such an old cooler, cool vid

[@Fate025]

Whenever Derbauer receives an antique cooler...... "lets cut it open!"

[@meverick666]

Heat pipes are even more efficient because the water goes trough a phase transition. The transition from liquid to gas with water takes up roughly the same energy as heating the same amount of water from 1°C to 95°C (under atmospheric conditions, a lower pressure also lowers the energy requirements for phase transition ).

[@Wooskii1]

This is crazy, I guessed exactly what is inside as soon as you started talking about what the manual says, AND I had access to one for a while but I didn't know what it was... My friend said that he had some weird liquid metal cooler that he wanted to get rid of, but was worried about throwing away for some reason. Now I get it lol. I wish I knew you were interested in it.

[@PlayerOblivion]

I like how that it was considered a good sign because it didn't explode during boot.

[@danwhite3224]

I mean the thermal conductivity of NaK is superior to that of Galinstan, but is it really worth it? I don't think so..

[@paulclark5437]

Liquid metals are WAY better at moving heat than water or its mixtures. The Prandtl number is the figure of merit that you want to look at. NaK has a Prandtl number that’s about 350 times smaller/better than water. NaK is used becase its liquid at room temperature so that’s a nice feature. Sodium has a lower/better Prandtl number than NaK but the operating temperature must be higher for it to liquefy. Sodium is commonly used inside valves in racing engines. It helps moves the heat from the valve face to the stem. Lithium has also been used for higher temperature applications where it is best. Liquid metal heat pipes have also been made. Liquid metals are electrically conductive, so electromagnetic/induction pumps can be used to move the liquid metal without any moving parts - common for casting aluminum. Any of these liquid metals quickly form a protective oxide layer when exposed to atmosphere. So they are not particularly exciting/dangerous in air. Now if you put them in water, it will reduce the water (i.e., the metal will take the oxygen away from the hydrogen in water) liberating the hydrogen as gas while generating heat, which can lead to the hydrogen bursting into flames. That is a little more interesting.

[@harvi3475]

Really enjoying videos of yours, especially those with old and/or wierd cooling solutions. Would you mind to test Zalman reserator 1? It's a bit strange looking like torpedo and being passively cooled i'm curious how does it keep up with modern high power pc components.

[@jamesinc87]

Sodium is used inside some engine exhaust valves to improve their heat transfer capabilities, maybe that's where they got the idea. But in engines, rather than an electric pump, they exploit the motion of the valve.

[@Duvoncho]

1:37 So the company was liquidated? Was that metallic liquidation by any chance?..... I'll, get my coat.

[@aclausenyt]

"if you think this looks crappy... then, I totally agree with you" 😂

[@monchiabbad]

You should compare this cooler to other coolers released in the same year.

[@LowCarbSweetHeaven]

1/4 of coolers fins are not covered by fan so... in better test condition, temps might be slightly better.

[@zharpain]

I could see how they thought this would be a great idea. I can think of a severe alteration that would make it a specialty case as the cooler would become part of the top portion of the case or the case would lay on what is I guess typically the back and the top would be a large side panel turned heat sink. The liquid metal would evaporate up and exchange heat with the rest of the cooler case via the pipes and then drip back down into the main heat block. With the low capacity it might(?) mean a faster transition back and forth if the heat can dissipate from the gas state quickly enough. Might have the fins tilted so that air flow would slam into them and be directed out an exhaust as that may help instead of just being flat with air only slightly scraping the sides. Has this been tested on video before where if the fins are tilted makes a marked difference? I'm not saying oddly bent fins but intentionally directed plates to get air to bounce off in between them and soak heat off them. Granted I can also see this taking heat and adding it back an inch further in but how much so. Please note I have no idea if this will work. This is just going off what I heard and probably doing what the makers of this item did. Had an idea and ran with it.

[@marinipersonal]

I remember some GPU that used similar solution, back on mid 2000s. Sapphire Blizzard, if I’m not mistaken. Not sure if that even released, as back then I was using NVidia. Just remembered the headlines at the time. Edit: the similarity stopped at the name 😅😅😅

[@dustinhipskind7665]

I really was wondering if mercury would have made a better coolant (toxic instead of explosive)

[@wereoctopus]

Mercury's volumetric heat capacity* is 1.89 J cm^-3 K^-1, less than half that of water, though maybe the high thermal conductivity makes up for that? * isobaric, at 25 degrees C. Since mercury is much denser than water, I assume this is more salient than mercury's *mass* heat capacity, but the physics involved is way past my pay grade.

[@arandomcomp2427]

Moving all that mass would require much more power compared to water.

[@wereoctopus]

@@arandomcomp2427 True, though water pumps used for CPU cooling are typically 5-15 W. Mercury's density is 13.6 * that of water, so you might need quite a powerful pump (maybe 100W?) to get it flowing, but after that you'd just need enough power to overcome friction losses.

[@05Matz]

NaK cooling is used on some super-hot industrial machinery (nuclear reactors mostly, IIRC?) that would boil traditional coolants, but it seems not only overkill for the temperatures of PCs but also full of downsides (like... the risk of spilling alkali metals around the house) that don't justify the questionable 'benefits'. Heat pipes work REALLY well, as do pumped water-based-coolant loops at the temperatures PCs operate at. The MHD pump is interesting, I'd vaguely heard of the NaK cooler but didn't know that's how it operated. Sounds inefficient but at least they don't have moving parts penetrating the NaK containment! Clever. It's probably not as dangerous as it sounds, but still pretty scary. Probably reasonably safe in operation, but throwing one out? That would cause PROBLEMS. The stuff would burn once it got wet, after all. Really cool piece of engineering though. It belongs in a museum! ...and not in people's garbage cans. Not sure what they were thinking, there. Every product should have a lifecycle plan.

[@cppctek]

You had me at most dangerous cooler ❤

[@face7772]

Heat pipes are filled with alcohol, at a very very low pressure.

[@junkerzn7312]

I'm amazed the sucker still works. That's a pretty beefy little power supply just to run the pump.

[@MikrySoft]

There is nothing moving inside to break. The "pump" is just two electrodes on both sides of the pipe and a pair of magnets perpendicular to them (top and bottom). When the current is flowing through the NaK it generates a magnetic field that interacts with the magnetic field of the magnets and, through a Lorentz force, pushes the liquid along the tube.

[@junkerzn7312]

@@MikrySoft The pump might not break, but we are talking a pretty viscous "liquid" being looped and numerous metals are involved. All sorts of things can go wrong.

[@smuggybugg4y85]

I assume the electromagnetic pump has no moving parts, that's actually pretty cool. If only it wasn't filled with dangerous chemicals!

[@The_Keeper]

So its filled with NaK... Thats very easy to dispose of, if a tad "lively". Here is how you do it somewhat safely; 1. Get the Nak into a container filled with oil, prefereably mineral oil. (To avoid the selfigniting with the moisture in the air.) 2. Drip it into a big tub of water to react it. (Or chuck the whole thing in for a very lively reaction) *Do it outside, or in a very well ventilated room.* The fumes are not good for you. 3. Once it has all reacted maybe chuck the cooler into the tub to react what remains in the pipes. The NaK will have been converted into SodiumHydroxide and PotassiumHydroxide. Both are safe to pour down your drains. In fact, both are used as draincleaners.

[@MikrySoft]

There are a couple of YT videos of NaK fountains, one called "NaK" by Periodic Videos and one called "Building the most dangerous fountain in the world" by Advanced Tinkering, that show operation of glass magnetohydrodynamic pumps. I had an idea once that one could make a whole PC cooling loop with glass tubing, nickel-plated blocks and radiators (since the NaK doesn't corrode nickel and steel, but the plating would have to be thick and solid, since NaK corrodes copper and brass) and a magnetohydrodynamic pump.

[@kevincolwell2115]

Alkali metals are great heat transfer liquids due to low cost, high thermal conductivity, and low corrosion potential for piping metals. Plain sodium has been used in fast-spectrum nuclear reactors for decades, and it has also been used in high temperature heat pipes. However, its melting point is too high to be useful for cooling electronics, so the potassium is added to make it liquid at room temperature.

[@Akamechanized]

Haha, what an nostalgia blast from the past. I had one of those back in the days.

[@michaelthompson9798]

While a product that didn’t make to market …. It’s things like this that are engineered, designed, a prototype built etc is how we end up with products that we do on the market. While not a great value product, it seems it still a decent performing product. Cudos to the company 💪✊👍😇event thou they closed down.

[@MrHeHim]

Might have done as well if the LMX cooler had complete airflow, looks like the bottom section wasn't receiving air flow.. Awesome vid

[@hinz1]

A CPU cooler with caterpillar drive from Red October! They used NaK or something?

[@sammoore2242]

I had heard about this before but never thought I'd see a contemporary review as I wasn't sure this thing would even be legal to ship.

[@dimitardimitrov9482]

What a great cooler. Damaged fins, fan covering only about half of the fin area and still giving comparable results to probably the best air cooler available on the market. It looks kinda beefy and it was definitely dropped and still only minimal damage and no spills. I'd buy one on a heart beat if they were available

[@raserdk1]

I used to have the same one as you but mine got 2 fans installed with some orange clips. I used it in my i7 4770k. And it did pretty good... but after i sent in my computer for repair and they decided to discard the whole pc instead.. I was so sad because I never got that special cooler back😢

[@AlanTwoRings]

What kind of repair shop throws away your entire PC?

[@raserdk1]

I cant remember their name.. but it was through insurance. So they decided to not repair it and give money instead.

[@Pgr-pt5ep]

Sounds like a startup where the engineers and business people met for the first time in their product launch ceremony.

[@spankeyfish]

...and the engineers were from the nuclear industry.

[@EvL--_--]

Very cool video about obscure nerdy tech, as usual, thanks Roman! :D

[@battlewrathgaming5047]

With heat pumps, you want a phase change to release the additional energy, so having 1/4 of the energy input required to induce a phase change, makes it more reproducible, that and you'll have to wait for your PC to get to 100 degrees before that mechanism starts, with the material you mentioned, that's 25 degrees, if the maths is as simple as that.

[@iplop]

Pretty sure that's a electrohydrodynamic pump (no moving parts) There's no room for an armature in that assembly. The high current draw also points to electrohydrodynamic.

[@JimmyZeng]

I'm guessing that was chosen over water because it can be pumped by a electro magnetic pump, without any moving parts.

[@ahayesm]

Holy crap, the put NaK in a cpu cooler... that's insane!

[@felixcosty]

Thanks for the video. Would be cool if you could take out the stuff that is in that cooler and replace it with the liquid metal we have today.

[@adilazimdegilx]

It seems like noctua fan is running a lot faster when mounted on LMX, in game test it reports 1500rpm where it was under 1000 with 12A. I think that's why it performs really close to Noctua. This is still an OK results for an old single tower though. But I don't think the liquid metal helps that at all. Interesting piece of technology. Thanks for risking the system for testing it for us 😅

[@maniacaudiophile]

The magnetic induction pump for liquid metal reminds me of the metallic refrigent fridge from Einstin and Plank(?)... Just from my memory, they abandoned that idea because the fridge was "howling like a banshee"...

[@jaredjurassic7184]

Knowing thermal conductivity is important to take heat away (that's why we use liquid metals on naval nuclear reactors (all are LMR on submarines), to avoid having to pressurize water to raise the boiling point and cooling properties) why would you consider it not to be in this case? Isn't the goal to take heat away faster?

[@defeqel6537]

He mentions that the important bit is the conductivity between materials, not within the material, but doesn't go into details which is better there, the salt solution or water

[@gigaherz_]

They are very different cooling scenarios though. A nuclear reactor outputs a **lot** of heat compared to a computer. Maybe the higher thermal conductivity is wasted because there isn't enough heat gradient? (I'm no material scientist maybe that makes no sense :P) Also, water may not have a huge thermal conductivity, but remember that heat pipes are phase-change cooling, the fluid inside (water or otherwise) is absorbing HUGE amounts of heat when it evaporates, and releasing all of that heat when it condenses in the cold side of the pipe.

[@lophilip]

LMR and used on a nuclear reactor because the coolant does not absorb neutrons, and it can handle extremely hot temperatures at normal atmospheric pressure. I get worried about my AIO leaking, I can't imagine how I would deal with this cooler leaking!

[@jaredjurassic7184]

Danke

[@scottyb069]

Wow, a molten sodium alloy ( as used to cool some nuclear reactors ) heat exchanger with a magneto hydro dynamic pump, that is truly next level. I am only guessing here but the sodium should be solid when cold and the MHD pump has no moving parts but relies on the magnet at the top and passing current through the alloy, Firkin genius.

[@BadHaddy]

It's sodium-potassium alloy, NaK. Its liquid down to -12c, and its viscosity doesn't change much at these temps. There's a LOT of reasons that is not ideal in a residential consumer product. It reacts with water, just like sodium and potassium. It will also react to atmospheric oxygen and can just ignite. Fun stuff.

[@spankeyfish]

@@BadHaddy It's basically a bomb.

[@05Matz]

Don't exaggerate, it's not going to _explode_.@@spankeyfish But if it gets broken open, the stuff inside will heat up as it corrodes from contact with the air, more-so the more moisture it absorbs from the atmosphere, and if it comes into contact with actual water it'll get VERY hot, and produce a bunch of hydrogen (that might just bust into flames) and strong bases, which sounds like a bad time. It's probably not dangerous to USE... but probably dangerous to throw away, because then you don't know what it's mixing with.

[@sandylotion]

Fantastic video, fascinating (psychotic) cooler!

[@FodrMichalych]

Not just heat capacity of water but in addition the amount of heat to evaporate water.

[@bkuker]

I'd like to know the wattage drawn by the pump, and to have seen you turn off the pump and watch the temperature rise.

[@awetisimgaming7473]

Im pretty sure NaK is used in cooling loops for nuclear reactors, but the idea is that its peak thermal transfer is up into the 300-400°c kind of range, and it may not perform well as a household item especially as you had mentioned. This is still cool science i guess, but yeah, that's nothing i want to mess with when there are alternatives that are so benign that you can drink them ya know

[@evertchin]

better heat conductivity means you can increase the flow and also mean that you can dump the heat faster.

[@TheGibsOfTheTube]

What game is that being played around the 10:10 mark? Or is it just a test demo "game"?

[@paulfox4636]

How does it compare when you mount the motherboard in a tower case? I guess standard heat pipes work fine in that scenario, so perhaps it's similar to water in that respect... was just wondering because they opted for a pump rather than convection, and they say don't mount a radiator with the pipes above the pump.

[@Revener666]

What about boiling point. Heat pipes with water can stop working when too hot right ?

[@george_christov]

Just chill, man! Its not that dangerous. You need a strong oxidizer - pure oxygen, water or acid to start violent exothermic reaction! If you drop it and spill out nothing will happen. Just a slow oxidation similar to rust, but faster ;-)

[@LordOfNihil]

NaK, in a cpu cooler? they use that stuff in nuclear reactors.

[@NATIK001]

Weird product, was briefly available on the market in its native Denmark. Makes no sense in the real world, but maybe it actually made sense in the laboratory and they just couldn't transfer prototype lab results to working models. I suspect they really wanted to make custom solutions tailored to each client but they probably needed to generate some buzz around the technology to sell to companies and the like and hoped a public product like this could be the source for that, but obviously for that to happen, the devices made for public use actually have to make some amount of sense, which this frankly doesn't. To be fair to Danamics though, NaK getting out is not appreciably worse than punctured lithium ion batteries in terms of collateral damage, so if the technology had worked and matured I doubt we would have been any more scared of it than we are of any of the myriad of battery powered products we use day to day.

[@denvera1g1]

the thing about liquid metal is that it is not self pumping like below atmospheric pressure water is. This would need some sort of pump and a loop for the liquid metal not just a tube that doesnt loop.

[@denvera1g1]

Oh, there is a pump inside

[@michaelmcneill6516]

What game is being used to test the coolers? It looks cool and I would like to try it out.

[@muxten]

same can't seem to find it

[@Skradgee]

Liquid metal air cooler? 🤨 My mind hurts.

[@zenazure]

wouldn't a gallium based liquid eat the copper or aluminum pipes? I think it might have been a corrosion issue to use a gallium alloy. it might have also been an issue with the electromag pump possibly needing a much higher wattage than the sodium potassium option.

[@wisnoskij]

Heat capacity. Not sure what the LM is doing but the water in a heat pipe goes throuhg a state change so the numbers for temp change are sort of different I think.

[@ГеоргийЛеонидович-ц1е]

I’m somewhat surprised that you did not consider 2 very important aspects: 1) How this cooling system behaves at ambient temperatures closer to 0 degrees. (its strong point is that it is closer to liquid cooling systems) 2) how much electricity it consumes when operating. (I heard that liquid nasriya is used as a coolant in some types of nuclear reactors)

[@DannyGraves1775]

The thing is Roman; NaK is a VERY good compound to use when you want to transport and dissipate heat over a larger surface area. Hell, there's a reason it's used in certain scenarios in Nuclear Reactors... It's heat storage may be significantly less than water, but when you can use an (electromagnetic) pumping system that's fast enough, paired with a reasonably large surface area, it makes up for it's lower storage in sheer capacity for fast absorption and equally fast release of the heat. The reason this thing works well now and didn't in the past is both due to the interface mediums we have today vs. back then, plus the fact that baseline temperatures back then just weren't at the levels we're seeing today, which resulted in lower efficiency. So technically, this cooler wasn't bad; it was just ahead of it's time by about a decade. I'd venture a guess that with the right thermal compound, a better mounting bracket and a pull/pull fan setup, this cooler has a lot of potential for modern CPUs, and technically, the hotter the better (so the new Ryzens would make a perfect test case).

[@TheYear2525]

The main reason they use it with nuclear reactors it probably because ist makes sense to use a higher temperature cooling loop, that is noch possible with water, or at least not with water under huge pressure.

[@ronnyspanneveld8110]

Danamics LMX Superleggera you got version2 i got version 3 somewhere on my i7 920 on a Rampage extreme 3 :P (runs at 4Ghz :P)

[@xilix]

LMAO! This just made me stop what I was doing - they put WHAT inside this thing?! 🤣What in the world were they thinking?! We HAVE to get an interview with these people on youtube, because I have.. so.. many questions 😂

[@xilix]

30amps!🤣lmao it just keeps getting worse! I'm gonna be completely honest, man.. this thing is so crazy, I have to respect it. This is the most audacious shit I've ever seen in PC cooling!