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I doubt Apple is all that interested in something like this for the Air because they have a faster, actively-cooled laptop available - the MacBook Pro. The Air

I doubt Apple is all that interested in something like this for the Air because they have a faster, actively-cooled laptop available - the MacBook Pro. The Air is their light-duty, fanless machine and I doubt they are all that interested in changing either of those qualities. It would be nice for consoles and other living room electronics. My PS5 fans are annoyingly loud.

freedomben 3y ago
Why is this downvoted? It's speculation and may be wrong (I don't think it is), but it's a perfectly legitimate thought that any other company on the planet would receive from HN without the downvotes. The downvoting anything critical of Apple is getting ludicrous. Maybe you believe they are a benevolent user-loving company who always does what's best for their users regardless of how it affects their business, but viewpoints who don't share that position aren't automatically wrong because they have a different opinion than you. Skeptical people are what built the hacker community. If you don't want to embrace that spirit, at least don't try to silence it. Edit: And yes, whether Apple would want this or not is very relevant, because if you read the article, they do not sell to consumers. The only customer for this would be Apple, and having Apple buy their product and put it in macbooks is the strategy they are pursuing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jameshart 3y ago
  1) it's not downvoted 2) it's not critical of Apple
  - freedomben 3y ago
    > 1) it's not downvoted To quote Doc Brown, "you're not thinking fouth-dimensionally!" It was when I posted the original comment.
Kirby64 3y ago
You can make large fans quiet, people do it all the time... it's just a design choice to not do it (since usually it involves size tradeoff). I assume this would be quite expensive to cool a PS5 though, since PS5s need hundreds of watts of cooling (so, you'd need like 20 of these modules?).
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  > You can make large fans quiet, people do it all the time This is unintentionally funny, because the law of fans is that the smaller they are, the louder they have to be to achieve the same cooling. Air moved is a function of blade size and speed (and shape and count and more, all applying to big and small fans ~alike) — and those two are indirectly proportionate. The smaller the blade, the faster you have to spin it. The faster you spin, the more turbulence you make, the more sound you get. Biggest hack for silent active PC cooling is to use upsized fans spinning slower (see Notcua).
  - Kirby64 3y ago
    Understood, however the PS5 uses a single giant 120mm fan (120x45mm) which should in theory be quiet. It's much larger than the fans used in many consoles. And yet... I'm not sure what other constraints caused this trade off.
    - ComputerGuru 3y ago
      One fan might not be enough for the amount of heat generated. The airflow engineering could be very poor, requiring high velocity and not just high cfm to overcome. It could be positioned poorly or attached to a skimpy heatsink to save on copper (or even worse, to save on another metal). The hottest components may have very small surface area so they don’t diffuse heat efficiently. Lots of reasons, usually having to do with thermal engineering not being a priority until late in the game.
    - jdietrich 3y ago
      The PS5 uses a centrifugal blower rather than an axial fan. Blowers can push air effectively through restrictive heatsinks and vents, but at the cost of greater turbulence and therefore noise. The Xbox Series X/S consoles use axial fans that move a lot of air at low RPMs; this requires large intake and exhaust vents and an optimised internal layout, because the flow rate of an axial fan falls rapidly as static pressure increases. The PS5 is fairly loud, but the noise is quite directional - it's much louder from the rear than the front. By keeping all of the vents on the front and rear of the console, it can work effectively inside a TV cabinet or media center that would suffocate an Xbox. It's not the set of tradeoffs I would have preferred, but it isn't a thoughtless design.
alt227 3y ago
Why speed up the cheap model when we have a faster model for more money?!
- losteric 3y ago
  Silence is part of the Air's appeal, as well as the shape which wouldn't allow for an internal fan
LordDragonfang 3y ago
IIRC, LTT did a video touching on these a bit ago and said there was still a noticeable hum (at an annoying frequency), so the noise savings might be less than you'd expect.
tiltowait 3y ago
Is your PS5 dust-clogged? Mine is effectively silent.
- criddell 3y ago
  I don’t think so. I just got it back from Sony and I would guess that when they replace the power supply, they would also blow out any dust.
- geoelectric 3y ago
  Unless it's calmed down since launch, PS5 noise is all over the place. I don't usually hear fan so much as coil whine on mine though.
- throwawaymobule 3y ago
  at the very least, getting at the fan for cleaning is toolless. they really learned their lesson from how bad some ps4s got.

freedomben 3y ago

Why is this downvoted? It's speculation and may be wrong (I don't think it is), but it's a perfectly legitimate thought that any other company on the planet would receive from HN without the downvotes. The downvoting anything critical of Apple is getting ludicrous. Maybe you believe they are a benevolent user-loving company who always does what's best for their users regardless of how it affects their business, but viewpoints who don't share that position aren't automatically wrong because they have a different opinion than you. Skeptical people are what built the hacker community. If you don't want to embrace that spirit, at least don't try to silence it. Edit: And yes, whether Apple would want this or not is very relevant, because if you read the article, they do not sell to consumers. The only customer for this would be Apple, and having Apple buy their product and put it in macbooks is the strategy they are pursuing.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jameshart 3y ago
1) it's not downvoted 2) it's not critical of Apple
- freedomben 3y ago
  > 1) it's not downvoted To quote Doc Brown, "you're not thinking fouth-dimensionally!" It was when I posted the original comment.

Kirby64 3y ago

You can make large fans quiet, people do it all the time... it's just a design choice to not do it (since usually it involves size tradeoff). I assume this would be quite expensive to cool a PS5 though, since PS5s need hundreds of watts of cooling (so, you'd need like 20 of these modules?).

ComputerGuru 3y ago
> You can make large fans quiet, people do it all the time This is unintentionally funny, because the law of fans is that the smaller they are, the louder they have to be to achieve the same cooling. Air moved is a function of blade size and speed (and shape and count and more, all applying to big and small fans ~alike) — and those two are indirectly proportionate. The smaller the blade, the faster you have to spin it. The faster you spin, the more turbulence you make, the more sound you get. Biggest hack for silent active PC cooling is to use upsized fans spinning slower (see Notcua).
- Kirby64 3y ago
  Understood, however the PS5 uses a single giant 120mm fan (120x45mm) which should in theory be quiet. It's much larger than the fans used in many consoles. And yet... I'm not sure what other constraints caused this trade off.
  - ComputerGuru 3y ago
    One fan might not be enough for the amount of heat generated. The airflow engineering could be very poor, requiring high velocity and not just high cfm to overcome. It could be positioned poorly or attached to a skimpy heatsink to save on copper (or even worse, to save on another metal). The hottest components may have very small surface area so they don’t diffuse heat efficiently. Lots of reasons, usually having to do with thermal engineering not being a priority until late in the game.
  - jdietrich 3y ago
    The PS5 uses a centrifugal blower rather than an axial fan. Blowers can push air effectively through restrictive heatsinks and vents, but at the cost of greater turbulence and therefore noise. The Xbox Series X/S consoles use axial fans that move a lot of air at low RPMs; this requires large intake and exhaust vents and an optimised internal layout, because the flow rate of an axial fan falls rapidly as static pressure increases. The PS5 is fairly loud, but the noise is quite directional - it's much louder from the rear than the front. By keeping all of the vents on the front and rear of the console, it can work effectively inside a TV cabinet or media center that would suffocate an Xbox. It's not the set of tradeoffs I would have preferred, but it isn't a thoughtless design.

alt227 3y ago

Why speed up the cheap model when we have a faster model for more money?!

losteric 3y ago
Silence is part of the Air's appeal, as well as the shape which wouldn't allow for an internal fan

LordDragonfang 3y ago

IIRC, LTT did a video touching on these a bit ago and said there was still a noticeable hum (at an annoying frequency), so the noise savings might be less than you'd expect.

tiltowait 3y ago

Is your PS5 dust-clogged? Mine is effectively silent.

criddell 3y ago
I don’t think so. I just got it back from Sony and I would guess that when they replace the power supply, they would also blow out any dust.
geoelectric 3y ago
Unless it's calmed down since launch, PS5 noise is all over the place. I don't usually hear fan so much as coil whine on mine though.
throwawaymobule 3y ago
at the very least, getting at the fan for cleaning is toolless. they really learned their lesson from how bad some ps4s got.