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Graphics Sapphire 'Blizzard' Gallium-cooled GPU's - what happened?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by wst, 30 Aug 2009.

  1. wst

    wst Minimodder

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    Back in 2005 there was a little buzz around some new Radeon X850-based cards that Sapphire were releasing that were cooled with Gallium metal, which melts at ~36C and has a thermal conductivity around 100x that of water. It would have an electromagnetic pump to circulate the Gallium once it reached melting point, so there were no moving parts in the card other than the liquid metal.

    I think that sounds great, so why have they stopped making them? (well, the heatsinks, the cards, well, they're obsolete!) Considering that air-cooling is still the most common form of cooling used, it's not in competition with waterblock coolers. It was fanless and completely silent, and didn't cost too much more than other air cooling either.

    So, any ideas why they stopped using them? (And has anyone had personal experience with them, and do you think it could be modified to fit onto a modern Radeon?)

    EDIT: Fixing a fact I got wrong. They had 2 fans, but they were 25% quieter than ATI's standard dual slot cooler at the time.
     
  2. Krikkit

    Krikkit All glory to the hypnotoad! Super Moderator

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    Probably not cost-effective.
     
  3. Fazed

    Fazed Minimodder

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    So, a drop from ear-splitting to migraine inducing:D
     
    Moyo2k likes this.
  4. Diosjenin

    Diosjenin Thinker, Tweaker, Et Cetera

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    Pure gallium is very expensive - $1,250 USD for 1 Kg, first place I checked.
     
  5. Moyo2k

    Moyo2k AMD Fanboy

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    That made me giggle :p:clap:
     

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