Gallium & Indium both cost around US$6000 per litre. I don't see liquids THAT expensive being the "way of the future". The world's total production of Gallium amounts to around 3000 litres per annum, and it is a by-product of aluminium ore mining, and most of the world's Gallium correspondingly comes from Australia, where it is sent to France to be purified into the basic element.
Still, at $6000/litre, and 3000 litres per year, I don't see liquid metal cooling taking off in a "big way".
Mercury is just plain toxic and environmentally dangerous.
Also, when all's said and done, once we factor in the weight of the metals, their viscosity and the corresponding pumping efforts, the realistically achievable flow rates as a result, and plug all that back into various thermal simulators, it works out that for any given pumping power, a liquid metal like a Gallium/Tin/Indium alloy will improve gross waterblock C/W's (C/W including the TIM layer) by around 15%.
i.e. If your CPU is 20C above ambient, then with a corresponding amount of pumping effort and liquid metal equivalent, your CPU temps would then be around 17C above ambient with the Gallium/Tin/Indium alloy instead.
For the price of the metal though, you could've built a cheap TEC water chiller, added a second pump, and knocked 10C off your water temps....
TEC-based water-chillers are the next step for improving water. Liquid metal alloys are just a curiosity.
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