1. Pretty amazing. I'd worry a bit about O3 buildup - ion generators like that usually have a MnO2 catalyst that back-converts the O3 to O2 with about 80% efficiency. Ozone has a tendency to eat up rubber seals and things.

Brilliant idea though; this is a hack to be proud of.

Posted at 2:32PM on Sep 17th 2006 by steve

2. thats absolutely incredible...325 CFM @ 0db???? dear lord, that beats everything on the list. wish there was a temp readout (before and after) though, details on how they measured cfm, etc.

otherwise, thats one truly lovely hack

Posted at 2:38PM on Sep 17th 2006 by steve

3. haha, two steve commenters in a row, and both are good steves. thankfully.

Posted at 2:39PM on Sep 17th 2006 by steve

4. WOW I'm definitely impressed! I really want to give this a-go myself. I think this sort of thing would be awesome to setup in my Xbox HTPC I'm building...

I wonder how hard it would be for someone to make a drop in PC solution... maybe something that fits perfectly into dual 80mm fan location.. or even a square version that fit's into a 120mm setting... thinking shorter fins but maybe 5 of them instead of 3?

There are a whole lot of possibilities, I'm most curious as to what the long term effects of this might be (if any at all).

Posted at 2:43PM on Sep 17th 2006 by twistedsymphony

5. I am actualy working on a dropin system right now. its actualy realy easy to do. it bolts on on the rear externaly. a 2.0 version will be comming soon.

Jared
Inventgeek

Posted at 3:11PM on Sep 17th 2006 by jared bouck

6. Can anybody post a link to a 'how ion coolers work' guide please? Google doesnt seem to throw up anything useful... Thanks

Posted at 6:45PM on Sep 17th 2006 by chris

7. From the front page of the project:
" total project cost: $9 - $15 "
From the second page of the project:
"We picked up our "ionic air cleaner" off of eBay for about 65.00"
Also there is no way in hell I'm going to believe an ion generator can move more air than three 120mm fans. If he wants to make a claim like that, I want to see what equipment he used to measure 325 CFM airflow.
The project is an awesome concept, but the guy is lying through his teeth to make it look better than it really is.

Posted at 7:28PM on Sep 17th 2006 by pikachu

8. how did they measure 0 dbA?

totally silent operation would be -infinity dbA.

Posted at 7:48PM on Sep 17th 2006 by mark

9. #8: the project cost was huge, look at all the stuff he bought: passive heatsink, PSU, ramsinks, ramdrive, etc.

I'm guessing they didnt measure 0dB, because if they were REALLY moving 325cfm, it would make a decent amount of noise (simply from turbulence).

I suspect the figures he quoted were from the box, which are likely 100% bs. These ionic breeze air cleaners are horrible at cleaning because they move very very little air.

Posted at 9:34PM on Sep 17th 2006 by japroach

10. @9

dBA is an adjusted scale, where 0 is around the threshold of human hearing. db are all relative, so on this scale, that's the reference.

Posted at 10:08PM on Sep 17th 2006 by Silver

11. umm, 0dba is not defined as the threshold of hearing... dba is just corrected for frequiency... absolute scilence is still -infinity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-weighting

In any case...
I am gonna have to yell BS here...
1. 0.0dBA is not completely silent... As stated before -infinity would be. They just pulled that out of their ass.
2. moving 325cfm of air through the case is going to LOUD.
3. There is no way in hell that an ionic air cooler is going to move even close to 325cfm... Heck, I would be
amazed if it could put out 1/10 of that.

Also, this is a
pointlessly expensive way to do things... Why would someone install window on an 8gb ramdrive?!? Heck, if you really need it get some cf->ide adapters and a 1gb ramdrive or something... Heck, you could get a 400gb barricuda that puts out

Posted at 10:28PM on Sep 17th 2006 by ...

12. less than 30db even during seaking... You are not even going to notice that with your 325cfm of air running arround...

Also, whats with the limit of post length?
And where is the preview button?

Posted at 10:30PM on Sep 17th 2006 by ...

13. yeah, i think there's a little bit of bs'ing there. Plus, the vid heat sink got horrible reviews from Maximun PC. Thats at least a grand worth of parts that he lists, not including a proc or motherboard.

I still think the best cooling for a PC would be to attach all the components to a box fan.

Posted at 10:46PM on Sep 17th 2006 by Rougelander

14. Those ionic breeze things do work, somewhat. I've seen them at Sharper Image stores pushing a good deal of air as they had streamers, ballons, etc. blowing around and I could feel the airflow. I could believe the 325 CFM as a best case scenario. However, when one of my buddies actually bought one it worked like it did in the store for awhile (about two months), then quickly died down to just emitting an ozone smell. He took good care of it, had it on a power conditioner, and cleaned it properly on a weekly basis. I would be very careful if those passive sinks can't cool the computer themselves.

Anyway... Please let us know how the unit fairs as it ages. Also, you should do some measurements to confirm the dba and CFM (Slashdot geeks are whining).

As far as the next phase, I'm thinking using it with a water cooling setup would be even better. This gets rid on the nasty problem of ions, since you can direct them away from all the electronics.

Posted at 11:13PM on Sep 17th 2006 by Tillin9

15. Wow! Just wow.

Sometimes you see an idea and wonder why you didn't think of it... this is one of those times. In retrospect I can't imagine why this hasn't been tried before.

Of course it has some drawbacks, the voltages, the ozone (respiratory problems anyone?), the general foreign-ness of it all... plus the slight possibility that it will fry the system... but hey if those kinds of worries had stopped innovation in cooling we would have never put phase changers in either.

Anyway, you've got to lock down those statistics on the CFM... remember we're all geeks here and there is nothing that a geek loves more than picking a nit. Also, I'd love to see a temp comparison between it and the same setup outfitted with maybe a couple of antec 120s or something... but still this is a big step ahead for truly silent computing.

Now try putting two in a case for some push/pull action!

Posted at 11:49PM on Sep 17th 2006 by bp

16. i cant get over these type of sites. They try and be witty:

"If you have difficulty with this step please close your browser and shut your computer off. Once the shutdown is complete slowly walk away from your computer and find a nice comfy place on your couch. Find any episode of Will and Grace or Friends and enjoy.”

Like if you can’t do this simple thing just stop now, but the bulk of the article is how to disassemble a fairly simple thing. Who here has ever acutely read directions when disassembling something like this? They don’t even say the model or brand of the Ion cooler is, so unless you lucky pick the same one, the details of the disassembly instructions are lost.

None the less it’s a cool idea(get it? thats a punn, har har), just written bad like most b0x moding articles :-/

Posted at 2:53AM on Sep 18th 2006 by Chupa

17. my god stop your moaning you lot its only a cooler at the end of the day .so he claims it can shift vast amounts of air so what . its a good hack so get over it you lot.

Posted at 7:39AM on Sep 18th 2006 by steve

18. "Turning on this computer has to rank as one of the strangest experiences I have ever had."

I know what he means, the first time I turned on my pumpless thermosiphon water cooled PC I said to myself "Crap, what did I f'up!?" Then is went "beep" and posted.

Posted at 8:28AM on Sep 18th 2006 by Jake von Slatt

19. Ooops, I forgot that Hackaday eats href tags. My pumpless thermosiphon water cooled PC is here:

http://www.vonslatt.com/proj-cc.shtml

BTW: I suspect that the ion cooled pc would cool just fine if you removed the ionic breeze unit and re-worked the case for good convective air flow.

Posted at 8:36AM on Sep 18th 2006 by Jake von Slatt

20. a neat tweak for this is to place flourencent/neon bulbs near the plates, they light up without having current directly applied to them

Posted at 11:22AM on Sep 18th 2006 by verycool