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Quiet, ultrathin AirJet solid state active cooling chips could replace fans
- rowanG077 4y agoI looked at this tech a while back. While it's cool the performance vs fans wasn't anything to write home about. I hope that has changed. We desperately need better cooling.
- atoav 4y agoI mean the vack pressure claimed in the article is a magnitude higher than with fans. And even if it wasn't running more silent is a value as well.
- causality0 4y agoDepends on whether their statements about using high pressure to scrub off the thin layer of warmer air right next to the heat sink are accurate. If so it could have significantly better cooling performance for a given CFM.
- kitsunesoba 4y agoIt could still be useful even if the performance isn't much better than a fan. If you retrofitted on of these into an M1/M2 MacBook Air for instance it'd be enough to keep the CPU from throttling under extended loads without sacrificing its original silent nature or making its bottom surface unsuitable for lap use, which is pretty cool.
- Daveenjay 4y agoHere is a YouTube video from PCWorld. Founder describes the product. https://youtu.be/YGxTnGEAx3E https://youtu.be/YGxTnGEAx3E
- ZeroCool2u 4y agoThe founder mentions the dust proofing as a nice side effect of the high back pressure, but I'm wondering if that might actually be necessary to prevent the mechanical membranes from getting jammed with gunk and failing over time.
- flog 4y agoI wonder if they could reverse the flow direction periodically to flush it
- robotnikman 4y agoI know some laptops do that to keep their heatsinks from clogging, not sure how effective it actually is though.
- kgc 4y agoSounds perfect for an ultra thin / light high performance laptop.
- klyrs 4y agoI'm really curious about these will fare through fire season. Fans get gunked up annually despite (low quality) filters on the case intakes and HEPA filters on my furnace/ac intake. I suspect that if you can't clean these cooling chips, they'll be garbage within a couple of years.
- metadat 4y agoIs there a case with a higher quality filtration system? Perhaps a mostly-sealed case with liquid cooling solution where the radiator is outside of the case would be more optimum.
- kolinko 4y agoAccording to the video, their system produces higher static pressure. This means that you can install better filters for air input/output on the laptop.
- londons_explore 4y agoI predict this will have clogging problems... A particle of dust isn't good for a mems device...
- dylan604 4y agoThey'll just use the same tech Apple did with their keyboards
- bilsbie 4y agoIt would be really cool to build these into clothes. Too late to patent this?
- ant6n 4y agoNow yes for sure.
- adrianmonk 4y agoI wonder if this would make sense for smartphones. There are already some gaming-oriented phones with fan attachments. This seems better than that (unless your goal is to look conspicuously gamer-y).
- londons_explore 4y agoIf I had just invented this, I would want to show it off with a demo attached to a CPU showing actual heat dissipation. I would have two laptops side by side, with motherboards exposed running some benchmark, and prove that my cooling solution could move more heat, be quieter, be smaller, or some combination of those things. The fact it is demo'ed just as a fan is in my mind suspicious.
- aPoCoMiLogin 4y agoLike this laptops side by side https://youtu.be/YGxTnGEAx3E?t=652 https://youtu.be/YGxTnGEAx3E?t=652
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- digitallyfree 4y agoLooks impressive from a tech standpoint, but I wonder how reliable it is. Laptop fans do clog and fail and something with tiny vents like this would likely fare even worse. Though a manufacturer might end up speccing these anyways as they expect the laptop to only last 2-3 years...
- lallysingh 4y agoI think with the larger pressure different, you can put better air filters on your air intake vents
- coryrc 4y agoThe filter will clog.
- kitsunesoba 4y agoFilters can be made to be easily be pulled out and cleaned, though.
- digitallyfree 4y agoThis is common on desktops, but I've never seen a laptop with removable filters. Typically I have to perform a full teardown to clean out the integrated heatsink and vent.
- luisapic 4y ago[dead]
- aqme28 4y agoAgreed. I could see dust being a big problem here.
- knifeinhead 4y ago
- Kovah 4y agoLinus Tech Tips actually made a video about a fan that looks just like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY-gA_zA_os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NY-gA_zA_os
- FpUser 4y agoThey remove heat by blowing the air over the flat surface. Looking at presented designs there is no way they would have enough of that flat surface area to remove all that heat. Does not matter how much air they would blow over that tiny surface. Traditional solutions involve gobbles of thin ribs with huge surface area that simply dwarves what they're proposing (I am not mentioning liquid cooling here as in the end it still ends up with the ribs). Clogging would be a problem as well but I guess it will not come to this stage as it would melt CPU first ;)
- ubercow13 4y agoThe article has a case study suggesting that is not true. It also says that real laptops with this are due this year. It also has an explanation of why it can extract more heat from a smaller surface area than a traditional heatsink in the video. The diagram says 'flowing air reaches the same temperature as the heat spreader' so this is apparently not a limitation at all. Of course, who knows if all these things are true, but this is a shallow dismissal.
- FpUser 4y ago>"The diagram says 'flowing air reaches the same temperature as the heat spreader' So both will happily stay at CPU melting point. They say that - "The Mini can dissipate up to 5 Watts of heat, while the larger Pro models can dissipate up to 10 Watts." which is definitely not enough to run performance laptops on sustained load. >"but this is a shallow dismissal." See the above. I think it is not dismissal that is shallow.
- stubish 4y agoThe PCWorld video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGxTnGEAx3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGxTnGEAx3E) discusses how a vapor chamber should be used between the heat source and the cooler to distribute heat evenly to the device. And that performance laptops are targeted for future generations of device, requiring upwards of 100 watts of cooling.
- mech422 4y agoHmm - I'm not a fan of active cooling solutions (peltier, water, etc). Unless really well done, a failure leaves you with basically zero cooling. I like a nice big chunk of metal! it ain't sexy, but its quiet and reliable.
- tantalor 4y agoA hunk of metal doesn't cool anything, it just moves the heat from one place to another until you reach equilibrium, then you have "zero cooling" again.
- andy_ppp 4y agoGiving you time for the CPU not to melt and shutdown the computer? Is thermal management clever/fast enough to do this on modern CPUs without any heat sink at all? Also I wonder about the failure rate of such a device. Very interesting though.
- formerly_proven 4y agoDepends on how much the CPU can lower power consumption. With Intel parts you can run them with no cooler, they'll just throttle to maintain 100 °C by default (exactly like in laptops). Not every motherboard allows this though, some will start beeping angrily when PROCHOT is asserted or reset. With Ryzens it depends, the chiplet ones can't do it, because the IOD power consumption exceeds what the IHS can dissipate without a cooler, so no matter what the CPU power management does, it will always eventually shut off. If you're in OC mode, it will do so at 115 °C. The APUs can probably do it, they'll probably be faster than Intel because they're more efficient. CPUs without an IHS just explode though.
- aqme28 4y ago??? All cooling is just moving heat from one place to another. There's no other way to cool anything.
- coolspot 4y ago
- zamfi 4y agoHmm. Doesn't "solid state" imply "no moving parts"? Their diagram shows a vibrating diaphragm...
- iancmceachern 4y agoA lot of times it's used to say no parts that move or slide relative to eachother. Things like piezo transducers and DLP mems chips are still considered solid state. Certainly a fuzzy line at best
- marcosdumay 4y agoIt can mean "single part", "no change in points of contact", "non-moving", "not liquid", "no liquids or gases", "no atomic displacement", "ideally no atomic displacement", and several other things. Worse yet, people often change the meaning between sentences of the same document.
- mongol 4y agoSolid state originates in solid state physics, as opposed to physics involving liquids or gases. The MEMS on the device are moving due to solid state physics.
- crazygringo 4y agoBut by that argument a traditional spinning fan is solid state, since the fan is solid rather than gaseous/liquid as well. Same for a spinning hard drive. Common modern usage of "solid state" in electronics seems to be synoymous with "no moving parts", not solid as opposed to liquid/gas. Vibration is kind of an edge case though, so I'm not really sure. There's an expectation that solid state components don't usually fail mechanically or need maintenance in that department. I wonder what the lifetime is for this type of vibrating component?
- mongol 4y agoYes, that's true. Electromagnetics are part of solid state physics. I think there is a tradition to it too, as solid state electronics came to be about semiconductors, and I think still to this day, solid state has that connotation. For that reason I see no problem in calling this a solid state device.
- bytehowl 4y agoI have first seen this tech demonstrated in 2012, but apparently the idea dates at least as far back as the early 2000s or even the 80s (EDIT: the 80s ones I had in mind were probably different). I was pretty hyped for it back then, but there have been barely any mentions of it since. Let's see if it actually makes it out of the lab this time, and if it actually delivers. 2012 GE video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm5fXj-hUpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm5fXj-hUpk Reddit comment mentioning some of the 2000s attempts: https://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/z9vn21/better_than_fans_new_airjet_chip_promises_to/iymo48t/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/z9vn21/better_than... Top comments mention some innovative cooling solutions from 2000s and earlier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn6qVv9HzHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn6qVv9HzHc
- baybal2 4y ago[dead]
- MisterTea 4y agoHow do these deal with dust and dirt?
- coolspot 4y agoWhile it indeed has high static pressure, I believe the catch is that absolute amount of air (and hence power) moved is miniscule. It consumes 2 watts to move 10.
- foota 4y agoYo dawg I heard you like heatsinks so we put a heatsink on your heatsink.
- sometimeshuman 4y agoThe founder of this company claims that the air speed is 120km/h in a PC-World video interview. It is surprising with such high airspeed that this device is "quiet". Is it possible that most of the sound energy is ultrasonic which is why they state their noise level as 21dBA and not 21dB ? From my understanding dbA is weighted according to human hearing. Your dog might hate this invention.
- clouddrover 4y ago> The founder of this company claims that the air speed is 120km/h No, the claim is 200 kph. He also said it's about 120 miles per hour.