I remember seeing the precursor to this some 10-12 years ago. Can't recall if it was the same company or not. The prototype looked like a block of very densely packed sheets of carbon fiber - imagine a typical car radiator but with finer and thinner fins made of some black plastic-like material - and once energized the sheets would oscillate in a way such that air got sucked through the block at impressive speeds. The prototype wasn't particularly silent.
On the whole this idea doesn't seem like it's going to do much for laptops now that Arm is entering the scene. Maybe it'll make a good solution for noisy graphics cards.
I remember seeing this a year ago. It's a bit worrying that in that time they still haven't gotten around to building a prototype that will be as quiet as the claimed final product. While that doesn't mean it can't be done, it may point to deeper issues in the project such as yet unaddressed technical challenges or lack of funding (which might in turn suggest lack of investor conviction).
Personally I'm curious what the failure rate will look like with these things. Given it will probably be higher than existing PC cooling fans which are moving lighter loads, this may indeed be a problem.
Some of us want the highest performance CPU and GPU possible in our laptop, but that requires a fan, but a silent fan would be a real value add over the current ones. Personally I'm happy to hear this, hope it makes it way into production laptops soon.
It 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.
I always wanted to do such a project and decided to go for it. I ended up hating it because it made me realize how much I hate coil whine. I mean: it looks so friggin cool, and placing it on your desk will probably give much better air circulation than under it. No fans spinning just made me realize how much noise most computers make that is hidden under fan noise.
I did have dedicated graphics card though, but a passively cooled one. None of my friends found it bothersome, so maybe I'm just sensitive.
There are discreet graphic cards with passive cooling available. The power-hungry models fitted with dual 120mm fans and a large heatsink are not too noisy either.
There's probably a market for an eGPU enclosure which can sit in a shared office without sounding like a small jet engine, though. Some of them are quite noisy.
In the PCWorld interview on YouTube they even showed an unbranded Intel laptop cooled by these chips and also mentioned that multiple device manufacturers are planning to put this technology inside their products this year. So I highly doubt this high frequency noise is an issue. They also explained that the traditional arrangement of having a vapor chamber between the CPU and the active cooling to move heat also works with this design without losing efficiency, and this way they also can increase the cooling capacity by putting more chips next to one another.
The one and only fan is the CPU fan, which is also used to blow air through the case and out holes in the bottom. I look forward to the next iteration, but my current system does everything I need without missing a beat.
I don't know anything about it, however the power consumption is non trivial: 5.25 W (net 4.25 W) Maximum noise inside device at 50 cm 21 dBA. Maximum power consumption 1 W. A laptop fan is around 2.25W or so for the whole operation and it can definitely dissipate more than 10W produced. A laptop will need 5 or so, more if it has any discreet GPU.
Funny note of the site - everything is metric (even pressure is Pascals, distances for the noise is cm - 50), but the airflow is in cfm (cubic feet per minute)
I'd love to have a desktop like this, but I wonder how loud they are. I'd expect that POWER9 Heatsink/Fan assemblies are made more for data center use, where noise is an afterthought.
seems iffy, might be useful alongside traditional cooling.
1. high frequency stuff to drive this thing might make noise an issue.
2. wouldn't it have to be integrated into the chip your cooling to optimize the effectiveness?
3. the wording leads me to believe their "performance" is cooling to noise ratio and not just cooling.
IDGAF about noise as long as it doesn't sound like in a server closet, i just want to keep things under 90c with a margin for hot days, crapped out a/c.
this is just a solid state fan. cool for sure, potentially very useful (industrial/embedded will probably love it), but marketing needs to calm down.
These days it is actually pretty easy to casually use liquid cooling for CPU and GPU fans which ends up being significantly quieter.
I have routinely been building nearly silent 99% maxed out gaming/vr rigs with integrated off the shelf liquid cooling units with no tubing or scary liquid interactions needed.
Arguably they've been around for a while now (I have two fanless shuttle mini PCs running on my desk, and one laptop made fanless by stabbing a screwdriver through the vent holes into the fan). It's just that whenever you want the last three inches of extra performance, you pay a heavy price with respect to thermal power.
On the whole this idea doesn't seem like it's going to do much for laptops now that Arm is entering the scene. Maybe it'll make a good solution for noisy graphics cards.
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