This Silent Cooler was 300 Years in the Making

[Sveeno]

Ventiva is claiming to completely REVOLUTIONIZE PC cooling. And they showed up with receipts for EVERYTHING. From handheld gaming consoles, to VR headsets, and even high powered laptops, we got to see it all.

[manikyath]

i recall some youtuber exploring ionic airflow to propel an RC boat, and while that guy defenately wasnt a team of super clever engineers, the power supply compared to a fan was *ridiculous* for the same amount of propulsion (aka air moved)

 

i found a paper describing 0.5-1 watt of power for 5-10 watts of heat dissipation... which is probably (?) less energy efficien than a fan, from a cursory search.

 

there's also problems with humidity decreasing the effectiveness of ionic wind generators, and EMI concerns around wireless communication.

 

while this defenately has size as a benefit, the question is "at what cost", and that cost is more than just dollars.

[Brian McKee]

1 hour ago, manikyath said:

i found a paper describing 0.5-1 watt of power for 5-10 watts of heat dissipation... which is probably (?) less energy efficien than a fan, from a cursory search.

Sure, but for low power usecases like a laptop or mini PC, the space and noise savings might be worth the powerdraw.

 

Noise above all else on laptops drives me INSANE.

 

Edit: also less moving parts, so potentially more durable? Yet to be seen though.

[manikyath]

28 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

Sure, but for low power usecases like a laptop or mini PC, the space and noise savings might be worth the powerdraw.

mini pc sure.. but in laptops that's a strong "depends".. let's say your 60 watt laptop goes from a 3 watt cooler to a 6 watt cooler (from what i've googled, that might be a fairly accurate comparison), you're basicly adding 5% to the power budget.

 

assuming their example power supply is also fairly close to expected levels of miniaturization, this would also put them at an amount of board space not too far away from the size of two fans? it's still more flexible in layout.. but it's also 6 watts of 5-10kv that you now need to shield from your sensitive electronics.

 

35 minutes ago, Brian McKee said:

 

Edit: also less moving parts, so potentially more durable? Yet to be seen though.

i'd usually follow you on less moving parts more better, but in this case the moving parts are a block of plastic and sealed bearings, two things we've mastered over the past decades...

 

compared to a hair-thin wire of a mystery alloy in a contraption sensitive enough to dust that they built in an automatic dust wiper arm... which is a moving part, that sounds quite important to the design.

 

oh, and from their research paper it appears that these need to live in a farraday cage because EMI?

[EclecticEman]

Interesting concept… though as other users mentioned the power draw is the question. I imagine little modules like this would be great on a Raspberry Pi where there are lots of passive cooling solutions that could use a little silent airflow. The Pi 400/500 come to mind, though Pis in general are usually used for stuff where silence is preferable.

I would not be surprised if they are still doing some PWM on these things, much the same way an LED can still look bright while also pulsing at above 60 hz. They also both are likely to be happy running at a certain voltage, and get less efficient if run at lower voltages. PWM would introduce turbulence though, and I would need to freshen up on thermo to remember if there is ever a case where that’s good for cooling.