Ionic Cooling For Your Computer 202
master0ne writes, "We (the folks over at InventGeek) have produced the first ionic cooling system for your high-end gaming system. This system produces absolutely no noise and in fact has no moving parts at all. While this is a proof of concept, it demonstrates that you can get the CFM you need to cool a system efficiently with no moving parts and no increase in power consumption."
Re:I don't get it (Score:1, Informative)
Basically, it charges the ions at or very close to the surface of the chip to act as a "magnet" for air.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/283716_coolch
What about ozone danger? (Score:5, Informative)
Read more here: Danger: Ionizing air purifiers impure [cnn.com]
Ionic Breeze does not perform as advertized (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway, it does pull dust out of the air. The amount it actually pulls looks impressive, but is actually so insignificantly small as to almost be immeasurable (as Consumer Reports found). You need like 20 of them in your room to make a noticable difference.
Further, they produce ozone, which then fills the room. Ozone can be harmful to people with some breathing disorders, so in some cases it actually makes things worse.
I don't know if the system mentioned by the poster also produces ozone, or if it also removes an insignificantly small amount of pollution, but the Ionic Breeze is simply not worth the money.
Further, the things are *NOT* silent. They make static-electricity noises. They don't start making them instantly..you have to run them for a few weeks. Then they start making zappy/poppy noises. They aren't hurt-your-ears loud or anything, but you do hear them, and they do just go on and on (even after you clean the plates).
Lastly, the darn things outright break after a few months.
The HEPA air filters are bulky and loud, but they actually get the job done. If you need clean air, go with that instead.
Re:laptop use (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.ecnmag.com/article/CA602416.html [ecnmag.com]
Re:Ionic Breeze (Score:5, Informative)
However, I found that it while it's silent to start with, it doesn't stay "silent. As it gets dirty, it start to buzz a little bit. Wiping the plates doesn't entirely fix it, because stuff also sticks to the other pole of the circuit. There are 4 long wires suspended in the case from top to that ionize the dust, and then the plates attract it. Eventually, the wires get dirty too, and to clean them you need to wipe them somehow. I used a bit of paper towel taped to the end of a piece of arrowshaft tubing. It's a pain to do, and while I never did it, it would be easy to break the wire.
My ionic breeze blew the internal fuse one day, when one of the capacitors in the high-voltage power supply spewed it's guts out, and I never bothered to fix it.
There's probably a lot better ways to cool off computer chips, I would think. A heat sink with a thermionic cooler would seem a lot more practical.
Brett
How an 'ionic wind' works. (Score:5, Informative)
This 'leaping' across has always seemed like how ice sublimates into a gas... it doesn't melt into water, then evaporate, an ice cube in dry air can evaporate directly. In the case of the electrons, they don't melt and flow across (spark) they just imperceptibly leap off one by one. Yeah, it's a bad analogy, but it's the best I can think of.
As the electrons leap across the gap, they sometimes run into air molecules. When they strike, they can merge with that molecule, and turn it into an ion... this air ion now has a negative charge, and it gets drawn toward the posotive side too... pulled across, the air molecule bumps and shoves other air molecules, and you get a current of air, many of them negatively charged ions.
This 'other side' happens to be big flat metal plates in the 'ionic breeze', but it doesn't have to be. It could be a simple grid of metal, like chicken wire or something. Anything that can carry a current, and let air blow past it.
The charge between the two can be thousands of volts, but the current is very small. However, something getting in that gap, like a bug, could get zapped. Yeah, bug zappers are technically 'ionic breeze' machines too, but the voltage and their shape is not optimized to blow air.
As to where I learned this... all hail Popular Mechanics. An article way back in the late 70's demonstrated these, but not to make ions... they demonstrated a grid powerful enough to take off. Imagine a perfectly silent helicopter with no moving parts, trailing a thick heavy power cable (because they couldn't generate enough electricity onboard to lift it on its own). Definitely a nifty idea.
The Raven
Re:Ozone anybody? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ozone anybody? (Score:4, Informative)
It oxidizes copper. I wouldn't want it anywhere near my motherboard.
CPU choice? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Informative)
Moving a large volume of air (CFM) over a large surface area is not going to cause a howling wind.
Re:laptop use (Score:3, Informative)
By that I presume you mean charge by time, which is current.
By introducing a large amount of charge to your body, you get a large difference in potential, which will have to discharge somewhere. However, more charge discharging in a short amount of time can be very damaging to meatbags like us, if for no other reason than the thermal excitation it causes along its path. Very high voltages can cause other problems, but as long as there's a low current, it's not really a problem.
I think a proper analogy would be to use heat as an example. Holding a warm cake in your lap for a couple hours while it cools off isn't going to cause you serious harm, although it may make you hungry. A small drop of molten lead with the same amount of heat would cause very severe damage when dropped in your lap, because the energy is transferred in a very short amount of time.
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)