England, a country built on brick designed to retain heat, experienced a historic heatwave last month. Having experienced the blistering 37°C/98.6°F peak myself, there's little I would not have done to escape that heat—even donning a silly-looking personal cooling wearable didn't seem beyond the pail.
Hardware channel Making Stuff with Mike is based in Denmark, which has also experienced its share of record-breaking heat. So, the YouTuber created a "functioning art piece" to keep him cool during the in-tents heat of BornHack 2026. The 'art piece' in question is a hard hat with an unusual centerpiece jutting out of it: A mini-chimney with a 120 mm Noctua fan mounted on top (via Hackaday).
The fan structure is 3D printed, with a custom USB-to-fan-header adapter inside. The fan itself runs off of 5000 Ah power banks, which Mike hopes will keep him cool for about six hours at a time. Airflow from the Noctua fan to Mike's bonce passes through a drilled out hole in the top of the hard hat, though this prototype's fan may still struggle when temperatures rise again.
The current fan setup isn't very powerful, running at five volts. Mike says he'd like to eventually upgrade to a 12 volt design for better airflow, though his chief concern is that this would drain the power bank much faster and require a physically larger unit that may not fit inside the chimney structure.
Mike also admits he's not thought much about cable management, electing to simply duct-tape the power bank to the back of the helmet for now. Though very silly-looking, it's hard not to be charmed by this particular project or its creator.
For example, when mounting the chimney template to the hard hat, Mike inspects his work and quips, "It's not perfectly straight but, you know what? Neither am I, so I don't care!"
Though an early prototype, Mike already has plans for how he'll further iterate on the DIY cooling device. Even at this early prototype stage, the 3D printed chimney features a spot to mount a PCB internally and potentially facilitate a light-up design down the road. Mike is also weighing up whether to leave the (now unsafe) safety hat bright yellow, or give it a steampunk makeover.
1. Best overall:
Noctua NF-A12x25 G2
2. Best midrange:
Noctua NF-P12 redux-1700
3. Best budget:
Arctic P12 PWM PST
4. Best RGB:
Corsair iCUE LINK QX120 RGB
5. Best budget RGB:
NZXT F120 RGB Duo
6. Best for radiators
Arctic P12 Pro
