Can a notebook be truly without moving parts? Yes! Solid State fans!

Silent, microchip-sized 'fan' has no moving parts, yet produces enough wind to cool a laptop

old news but interesting, just came across this article about solid state fans, this could be revolutionary if it really gets out to the market, Imagine 8 of those, it will give you 200w TDP cooling capability! And will use about the same space as 2 fans that we already have, while probably forgoing the weight of the heatpipes and the necessary space for that

This thing is incredible, I wonder what went wrong, its been 4 years since prototype

 

u mean 4 of them? and they would take up the same space (or less) than one of the two fans i have in my laptops... awesome, where can i get my hand on one of those

 

Or you can have a ULV CPU and do passive cooling?

 

I find the idea quite interesting, if you do airflow path, where it gets a higher due to the tunnel, you can go for smaller, lighter and NOISELESS laptops.

That is basically a heatsink with some ionizing applied due to a charge going through it. you can do this at home, BE WARNED OF THE DANGERS OF THE WASTE, I.E. OZONE, get a aluminum film, make a triangle of it, connect a current, and it should float in the air.

this can be revolutionary to notebooks, extremely revolutionary, and hopefully intel with broadwell gets the tdp of the cpus down and the gpu makers do the same we can have the power of the m18x in a 15 chassis

OOOPS now I saw the blatant math mistake

 

haha its alright ur allowed a couple of math errors when ur excited

haha that would be for ultrabooks but since this is in the gaming section....

if implemented, it would mean something like the 7970m/680m + full voltage cpus in a mba/zenbook chassis due to the reduced size. and yeah how mr.mm said b4 crossfire cards in a thin 15 in chassis. (think new xps 15 without throttling issues and 2x 7970m/680m) along with bare minimum noise (air flowing noise not fan blades whirring) and cool to the touch

 

I can see one potential problem: cost, if it costs more than a fan, you cna be sure that whoever is running the show at the laptop manufacturer will see the extra cost and say no (most big companies seem to be run by accountants these days if you see what i mean).

Regarding noise, it will not be silent, you won't have the noise from the fan, but you'll have the noise of the air going through the heatsinks, it will make less noise, but it won't be noiseless.

As for what went wrong, could be a number of things:

A flaw was discovered in the design
No one was able to market it successfully to the OEMs/ODMs
More expensive than anticipated
etc.

 

I agree with all your points, the cost issue is the most blatant thing that came in my mind. Lets say you buy a fan for 1 dollar, and that thing costs 1 dollar as well, you are still going to think if the R&D costs of the implementation of the system in your line up is going to be worth it, due to the case redesign, custom layout of the mobo, how much cooling you are going to get without entering other hic ups (the solution that I posted was only able to cool 25w TDP, how are things if you enlarge it? that means also more R&D)

Its not that companies are run by accountants, there is a razor thin margin, some companies avoid that, like apple, others make a futile attempt to compete for consumers at 300-500 notebooks, getting 15 bucks of revenue on a pc is extremely troublesome

yeah the air is going to make a sound, specially if you tunnel it. but it will be far less than the fans. I hope it can be far less than 30db

 

yeah its going to be more expensive than a regular fan but I wasn't saying to put it into regular notebooks. The major players could put it into their premium line, ASUS ROG, Dell AW/XPS, HP Envy, Sony s/z series, samsung s7/9, mbp/mba etc. where people would be willing to spend the extra money for the better cooling and performance.

as for sound yeah ik there will be sound but much less. like the diff b/w a regular fan and one of those blade less fans. we could hopes its still in prototype stage or the OEMs are implementing later on when its more cost effective...

 

Yes, they could put in their high end lines.

I didn't mean that accountants ran the show literally, more that there is a quasi obsession with keeping production (and operating) costs as low as possible regardless of profit margins and while the profit margins are indeed thin, would you mind paying 20$ more for better cooling? I've seen the results of that first hand at a place i worked before (not related to tech), the higher management in the US was obsessed with keeping an inventory as low as possible (equipment in inventory isn't earning them any money after all) meaning that we were running out of stock often enough and that was actually driving customers and profits away :rolleyes2:.

Here's a though, you have a 1500+$ notebook, slap in better cooling (let's assume it costs 20$), sell it for 50$ more, advertise better cooling, profit or slap in a better NIC for another 20$ and still sell it 50 over the previous price. Once you hit a certain price bracket, you usually end up with the enthusiasts that won't mind paying more for better.

There is also the fact that people are often set in their ways and it's hard to change that sometimes.

 

for better silent cooling implementing this I wouldnt mind paying up to 100$ extra along with extra for upgraded gpu. and yeah like u said, lets say $1k+ price range they offer this as an option. I'm not saying put it in budget 300$ laptops

 

Yes I agree, the problem would be that the management havent implemented a good supply system, its actually their fault, not of the system. But I get your point.

I was expecting it to trickle down on the high end lines before anything was done to the mainstream consumer line up. Basically in there they put halo products, thus it makes sense to put those things in there.

The problem here aint so much the need to save the pennies of the cost difference itself, but the R&D needed to put those things in there, that was why I put the fan and the solid state thing at the same price. Pennies do make a difference, lets say that a line sell 100k laptops (quite possible, thats actually the average) a 50 cent difference would mean 50k loss in profit, so its not that the pennies in there dont make a difference, they do, specially on the more mainstream lines. But on the high end where you are already paying a good premium over it, that cost can be forgiven.

Tijo I know that you have looked at the mobo of the retina, compare it to their competitors (actually the MBP competitors), and see how larger the mobo is, how that custom designed costed them money, and there are some interesting implements in there as well, like the ARM soc that takes care of ML power nap. the cost of the soc itself is quite low, to make all that happen aint.

 

This could be a thing that Apple does. They usually like putting in new parts before other PC makers do and they don't worry about the price.

 

indeed what I was thinking, it will be perfect for their retina line up, it already comes with cooling design that creates a tunnel

 

No mention of power consumption.

Although if it were a truly viable alternative to traditional fans, then I am surprised we haven't seen this in any application yet. I wouldn't be surprised to see it in an Apple product.

 

I wish every prototype/new piece of technology could be mass produced as soon as it was tested. We could have so many cool things, but sadly it seemingly takes awhile for things like this to get on the market, and to be put to good use. Why can't we have military grade technology?

 

This was demonstrated in 2008, 4.5 years ago. For anything in the PC industry that's a long time to market.

 

Yeah no kidding. Can you say flexible OLED?

 

That's another one, yep.

 

Why spend money on stuff that doesn't make more money?

 

An even older article on the same topic:
'Nano-lightning' instead of fan to cool your laptop

 

everything that you spend money, makes money.


katalin thats... abysmal... while 4.5 years was already a long time, 8 years... is... trash can, lets get another project

 

We DO have the ability to mass produce viable prototypes as soon as they've been tested ... but the market doesn't work like that (profits and 'cost' inhibit this kind of practice - which of course have nothing to do with resources, technical efficiency or ability to pull something off).
If it did, silicon would have been a thing of the past for years (which incidentally it IS - the only reason its still being used is because its 'cheap' for companies, and it a multi-trillion $ industry to boot - you seriously think they WANT to transition to something new? Not by a long shot. They will stall, and start with minor new add-ons, followed by 'hybrids', and then after a good few decades, they will FINALLY transition to full fledged new materials - that still doesn't mean we can't do it today - we CAN - the market just doesn't want to because of potential loss of profits from 'current' technologies).

Other than that... does the OP refer to the Ionic wind technology?
The technology is years old indeed.
That's what I mentioned some time ago but couldn't find an article on Tomshardware (until recently).
It was apparently abandoned for some reason, but Apple decided to patent it so they could use it in their portables.

This is the TomsHardware article that I read back then:
Cool Your PC or Laptop with Ionic Wind

And this is the info from early this year:
Apple Reinvents the Ionic Wind Generator Cooling System - Patently Apple

 

yes its the ionic wind tech.

lovely that apple has patented it (it is very different than what we were thinking here), unfortunately that means little, they have tons of patent, but since its from this year one can only hope

 

The problem could be efficiency. If it takes up too much power then it may not be that viable for laptops. It would be nice to see in DTR's though.

The smaller size could alow for the wind panel just at the outsidepannel for easy removal and cleaning. This also would leave all that original fan space either for smaller and more portable or in DTR's better heat pipes and cooling fins etc. Adjustability may be an issue though.

It is easy to turn a fan speed up or down, how easy is it to adjust these? Extra circuitry will mean extra cost! while some of us would be willing to shell it out as a total here we are the minority and evev of that not all here would fork the money over......................

 

Tan,

This guys says 35% more effient... News: Non-Moving Solid State Fan Outperforms Traditional Fans | MegaGames

We use solid state Peltier coolers at work but the big ones, like the desktop versions, use a fan and are energy hogs as we find out.

Cost should be no object..heck look at what is being spent for SSD's over the last few years!

 

Hi and I will probably endeavour to suggest manufacturers THIS BELOW !
(but obviously in small sizes Imagine that non circle one in small size nicely installed in laptop ! no more horrible whirring noises
loud ancient fans just air noise

 

Those have fans in them... Just in the base instead of in a grille.

 

That statement is actually tricky, is it 35 times more power efficient or 35 times the space efficiency etc. For portables both are important but power is the one that could be a killer. No matter if it is a power issue, again for DTRs, Servers and other situations this could prove to be very promising despite the costs involved unless they are way out of reach.................

 

That'd be nice for shock resistance, too; but mainly sound.

 

Horizontal heatsink? It'd take up more space and add more thickness and you need to move air across the heatsink to make it effective. Not to mention the heatpipes that carry the heat to the heatsink wouldn't be effectively cooled. You'd have to make the heatsink cover the bottom of your laptop and have a giant thin fan or two to push air out of the bottom.

Bladeless fans like these?

<iframe width='560' height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/4WNcjkZ6d0w" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

The blade of the dyson is in the bottom of the base, then the air is tunned through vents around the "fan".

 

I know that, just wanted clarification if this was the bladeless fan taetertot was referring to. Actually there are no blades either, but a compressor. In any case it wouldn't be any less compact than a traditional fan.

 

Never seen this one, guys? DailyTech - GE Uses Jet Engine Tech in New Piezoelectric Coolers for Ultrabooks, Tablets

 

i have posted that a long time ago.

in the end, I don't use the ODD, nor I do think it serves any purpose. back up is extremely problematic, since it degrades quickly over time. I do still have some music CDs lying around and have ripped those long time ago (flac off course), and I still have a vinyl collection, basically mostly classical

I do use BR, I simply hook it up to my notebook and play the movies I want, and yes there is a large difference in quality, even between BR.

its simple, the ODD bay can be useful, for the uses that are available on the y500 illustrates its versatility to the best (the ultrabay was the poor old cousin). Do I think its necessary? nope. Do I think because there is a possibility of it being as a cooling solution excuses the poor cooling that was provided in the first place? no.

Simply put, while versatile, the y500 tech should be applied to the thinkpad line, as in gpu possibilities. I would love so much to have a T4XX with a decent dgpu in it, or any enterprise class notebook

and I have a 10mbps connection, ask me if I download a game more than once? nope. I just save the download to a external, simply put it takes me 1.5 days to download shogun 2, thats a 30gb+ game

 

I don't see how that will work. Sucking in and expelling the same hot air over and over again? I can't imagine it will cool all that much.

 

A quote from Civ IV comes to mind:

"You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bon-fire under her deck? I have no time for such nonsense."
- Napoleon, on Robert Fulton's Steamship

 

There's a difference between moving air and cooling air. If the piezoelectric device had a built in peltier cooler or something that'd be different, but it's just huffing and puffing the same air in and out, not taking in cooler air from an external source. In the examples they gave in aircraft, etc, it was using an external source of cooler air to provide the necessary cooling. It's no different than a fan. Turn a fan on yourself on a hot day, it will just blow hot air on you. It may cool you off a little bit but not if it was blowing air on you from the refrigerator.

 

it works as a fan, instead of blades it pulses. its simple, both have limitation of how effectively they can pump air and how air is a bad thermal dissipator

 

Right, but the point is that a laptop fan draws in cool air from outside the laptop. This just circulates air from within the laptop.

 

not necessarily, there will be residue off course, but the benefits of size should outweigh that, since in any given terms there is a possibility to create a wind tunnel that is not only a hard point but a moving thing, aside that you can have several localised heating dissipation units, while at most we use 2 fans, we would be using several.

 

Based on that video they just replaced the CPU heatsink unit with one of those devices that's it. It takes in air from the same place it expels it, like your mouth, so it's not a wind tunnel. It doesn't have a separate intake or output. If it could take in air from one side and expel it out the other that would be a different story altogether.

 

from what I remember from the video it was a somewhat hollow device, and that it did compressed the air, leading to both sides expelling air and intaking. aside that one thing is to just slap the device on top of an existing chassis and another different thing is to actually design something with it in mind. I can't claim that if I bought a fan and turned it on in the open it would have the same effect as a real wind tunnel, its the same fan, but one will push more than the other

 

You mean this:

<iframe width='560' height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Hm5fXj-hUpk?start=63&end=83" frameborder='0' allowfullscreen></iframe>

Looks like a single intake/output to me.

 

i'm with HWnut, looks like cr*p to me, seems they forgot that a cooling system needs fresh air from outside. Maybe it could work for ulv cpus though. I wonder also if it's completely quiet and very reliable in the long term. Seems like a failure sensitive piece of hardware to me.

 

you are right, my memory is again terrible.

i still think it works, no one in their right minds would invest that kind of years into developing something that haven't presented results

and since when you know about materials or cooling

 

Well it wasn't designed for PC application. It was designed for aircraft application where it's ingesting cool air and blowing it out to the hot source, on a much larger scale. The inside of a laptop is a confined space, and the tech has been shrunk down considerably. Different animals completely. And you'd be surprised how much development goes into something only to have it fail miserably. You probably only see less than 1% of the tech that actually has a chance of being utilized in a commercial sense.

 

SSFans? Noobs please. Behold the future of computing:



Can be stored anywhere! Fridge and freezer powered!








This post is not meant to be taken seriously.

 

very valid points, although I still think the plausibility of it being used for much smaller and constrained environments is still there. lets face its not like those fans are not pushing air that isn't heated and that we also have the air circulation being the breather there

 

I've contacted GE few months ago, but they weren't very keen (at all) on sending samples. It's OEM only I guess. Expected availability - end of the year to OEMs, early next year on the shelves tied to some devices of course (IF there are any).

I'm thinking about this - some SUNON Mighty Mini fan/blower blowing fresh air perpendicular to the opening of those things and two of those in series blowing to the radiator of the heatsink. Anyway, I think that those little fellas pack some punch. I know that it's wildly irrelevant but they could be like the Mantis Shrimp

 

Fans draw in fresh air from outside and push it directly over the heatsink that is transferring heat directly from the CPU/GPU through a heatpipe in a very efficient heat transfer medium. The fans are pushing air only as warm as the ambient temperature of your room.

So you will use a traditional fan *and* multiple solid state fans? Not sure how that's more efficient? You've just introduced more parts, more power, and likely less efficient. Plus the heatsink is there to draw heat out of the medium that transferred the energy. In the case of these piezoelectric fans there would be non need for a heatsink. Only way I can see this being marginally effective is if you had a fan on one side pushing air in and a fan on the other side pushing it out, but even then a well designed heatsink with that kind of air pressure over it would probably be just as efficient as these things.

I don't want to sound all negative, but I just don't see it as practical for a traditional laptop unless there's something about the devices that they're not sharing, like if it has an actual cooling device inside the unit, if it's able to draw cool air from outside? I can see it working with low power devices like some of the 13W or less CPU's, but not much else.