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Brad LinderVentiva unveils an active cooling solution for fanless laptops
Most laptop computers have fans to help dissipate heat generated by the CPU and other hardware. But fans generate noise, have a habit of getting clogged with dust, and like most moving parts, an sometimes break down.
Fanless PCs have been around for years, but they usually come with trade-offs like lower-power processors that generate less heat. A company called Ventiva says it has a new solution that can bring active cooling to fanless laptops operating with up to a 40 watt TDP.
Ventiva says its ICE9 system uses an “Ionic Cooling Engine” to create an electric field between two electrodes that strips molecules from nitrogen, oxygen, and argon in the air to create ions that are “repelled from the positively charged emitter.” As those ions move, they drag other air molecules with them, effectively improving airflow inside a computer without the need for a fan.
The company says the result is a system that’s runs silently, and which doesn’t take up much space – ICE9 is designed to be a series of small modules that can be arranged in different shapes inside a computer, but the company says the solution “is up to 80% smaller than a fan or blower,” and can be put in a laptop that measures as little as 12mm (0.47 inches) thick.
YouTuber Dave2D says a “well known” company plans to show off a laptop featuring ICE9 cooling at CES in a few weeks, and he also got a chance to check out a demo unit to confirm that it really does seem to offer a way to silently move enough air to keep a laptop cool.
It’s not quite as good at moving air as a fan, so it’s not going to work for gaming laptops or mobile workstations. But it should be able to keep the thin and light laptops that use 15 to 35 watts processors cool, while enabling silent performance.
That said, Dave2D notes that there are a few potential down sides to ICE9 cooling. One is that the technology will most likely be substantially more expensive than a fan.
Another is that ICE9 has less than a third as much static pressure of a typical laptop fan, which means an ICE9 module won’t be able to draw air from as far away as a fan can. And that means PC makers would probably have to make significant changes to the design of a laptop to ensure that cooling modules are placed close to an air intake vent and the components they’re meant to cool.
Ventiva isn’t the first company to unveil an active cooling system for silent, fanless computers. Frore’s AirJet cooling technology has been around for a few years. But so far only a couple of devices featuring AirJet cooling have hit the market, and none of them are as power hungry as a mainstream laptop computer.
One reason for that may be that AirJet modules don’t move as much air as a typical fan, so you’d need a whole bunch of modules to offer the same level of performance as one fan. And that takes both space and electricity. So AirJet might be better suited to devices that don’t generate much heat in the first place and/or which are meant to be used while plugged in.
ICE9 could theoretically be a more viable solution since it’s more energy-efficient and better at takes up less space than AirJet. But it’s still a new technology, and I wouldn’t place any bets that it’ll be widely adopted anytime soon.
#activeCooling #ice9 #ionicCoolingEngine #solidStateCooling #ventiva
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