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> Fluorinert is a super niche product. I mean, that goes both ways. At that price it will always be a super niche product, and never graduate to "plain niche".
by dale_glass 5y ago
> Fluorinert is a super niche product.
I mean, that goes both ways. At that price it will always be a super niche product, and never graduate to "plain niche".
Look at the enthusiast market, there's no lack of fancy water cooling gizmos out there. They're bought by a small segment, but there's still a market for fancy gizmos to provide the best cooling for overclocked high end hardware.
And that's exactly what I'm getting at -- it's not enough to make cool stuff. The cool stuff also has to reach the people interested in using it.
- imtringued 5y agoEvery ARM Server SoC failed to make their chips available. They do deals with "hyperscalers" and then wonder why nobody wants their chips or the hyperscaler just designs their own chip and makes a dedicated SoC vendor that only sells to "hyperscalers" obsolete.
- michaelt 5y agoI suspect some of these products have a funny price curve. If Fluorinert costs $300/litre today and you cut the price to $100/litre - that's still far too expensive to become a mainstream PC coolant. It's not like there's a proven market for mineral oil PC cooling. Could be, if you cut the price of Fluorinert by 2/3rds, you'd just be giving a discount to your existing customers, for whom price is no object anyway.
- kadoban 5y agoMineral oil is _very_ messy, which really doesn't help at all. And the one company that sold the tanks had to stop due to some patent nonsense.
- michaelt 5y agoAccording to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert#Toxicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert#Toxicity Fluorinert has to be limited to closed systems because it has "high global warming potential", it can decompose into a highly toxic gas, and "care should be taken to avoid contact with eyes and skin" (I'll admit I'm not sure how all this squares with the 'inert' in the product's name) To me this sounds more difficult to use than mineral oil, not easier.
- kadoban 5y agoIt does, yes. Seems like they have another product that fixes that issue, but it also sounds toxic. Not something I'd want to play with.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- MauranKilom 5y agoIsn't Flourinert a PFC and thus really dangerous/impactful in terms of accelerating global warming? I think we do well to keep its use to niche applications.
- Someone 5y agoYep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert: “As perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), all Fluorinert variants have an extremely high Global Warming Potential (GWP),[1] so should be used with caution” That page also says “Although Fluorinert was intended to be inert, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory discovered that the liquid cooling system of their Cray-2 supercomputers decomposed during extended service, producing some highly toxic perfluoroisobutene. Catalytic scrubbers were installed to remove this contaminant.” Perfluoroisobutene is a schedule 2 substance, in the sense of the Chemical Weapons Convention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Schedule_2_substances_(CWC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Schedule_2_substances_...), so it’s a substance that “can either be used as chemical weapons themselves or used in the manufacture of chemical weapons but that have small-scale applications outside of chemical warfare and so can be legitimately manufactured in small quantities”.