The Nukit Tempest - PC Fan Air Purifier Kit (Canada)

Thanks Naomi and team for making a version of Nukit that's shipped from Canada. I always try to shop Canadian to avoid customs/import fees. I got two of these kit to help with wildfire season smoke. I have a box fan, and that thing is SO loud that I can't hear anything when I'm around it. These kits are WAY MORE QUIET than the box fan. Both kits running = still much quieter than 1 box fan.

I built them myself. Everything was very well packaged and nothing was damaged. One of the provided "5.5mm barrel jack to 4-pin PWM connector" cable seems to be a sensitive (e.g., fans don't power on unless I twist the barrel jack connection a specific way) but seems to be working now that I've figured that out.

The hardest part for me was researching and sourcing the other parts up front. For the build itself, the hardest part was trying to push the rectangular plastic connector into the rectangular metal hole.

Instead of using the provided zip ties, I just used gaffer's tape to tape wires down to the curved exterior enclosure of each fan. Probably looks more uggo, but it's easy to redo if I ever need to. It doesn't seem like the you have to be precise with the daisy-chaining of fan wires. I connected them a bunch of different ways and they all seemed to work. I didn't buy the fan grills/protectors, since it's unlikely (in my environment) that stuff will touch the fan blades.

I have a white one for my living room (which is the black metal one, covered in white gaffer's tape, but you could paint it for more permanence) and then the original black one for a different room. Arctic has white fans for more $, but a word of caution (after 1+ month of running non-stop) is that I've noticed that these fans might expel some of their motor/lubricant oil onto the interior edges of the fan enclosure, which happens to be very visible on the white.

Here are a few other Canadian suppliers (no affiliation) I used, in case that helps others who are accumulating parts for this build:

FILTERS: "Furnace filters Canada" has 12-bulk packs. It's a huge pack (in dimensions/size), so make sure you have storage space. They shipped via Canada Post.

FANS: "Memory Express" sometimes has stock for a comparable price. As a last resort, I also used "Aero Malls" seller via Amazon.
Note: it's easy to get the incorrect fan models because it looks like a jumble of letters to non-tech-inclined. From what I cursorily understand:
P14 = the size of the fan (140mm)
PST= fan with high static pressure (related how well your fan deals with airflow)
PWM = pulse width modulation (related to the amount of power your fan uses)
The recommended P14 PST PWM also comes packaged with a CABLE SPLITTER that is what's used in Nukit for daisy chaining, so if you opt for a different model, your fan may not come with the cable splitter!

I've undoubtedly spent a lot of money up-front on everything, but also feel like it was an investment so that future me doesn't have to worry about air filtration/filters for the next 4 years. I also feel that it's worthwhile to support the availability of a DIY kit—learning through making, buy-it-for-life / using less waste, etc. and of course, support Naomi!

Ordered two of these, took me a while to get around to building them due to constant frustrations with the building process.

We bought 5-pack Arctic P14 Max fans plus some single fans, as the recommended Arctic P14 PWM PST 5+1 packs were not available in our area. I expected these to be functionally identical to the recommendation, but they required me to go out and buy piles of splitters to daisy chain this all together. Ok, fine, willing to take that on the chin as user error. The Nukit instructions make allusions to a "wiring harness" to daisy chain the recommended fans with, but I don't believe I received this in either kit. I only had a gender change wire to make the final connection from the fans to the DC power, everything else I had to supply myself. Again, maybe a lack of reading comprehension on my part, but frustrating to find myself having to drop more money on this thing than I expected to get basic functionality up.

Finally, 20"x20"x2" filters are also not available in my area, so I replaced with only one 20"x20"x1" on each side. You'd expect these to fit with room to spare, but we could barely get the kit to close up around the filters. Took two people to wrangle the screw holes in place, and ultimately could only get 3 screws in. The end panels now look like they are bending slightly inwards, and we didn't want to push our luck trying to get the last screw in. We didn't even try to fit the screens in.

It's frustrating because we followed the instructions very closely (as much as we could given part availability). Our kit doesn't look like it's built incorrectly when compared to the photos in the instructions, but it almost feels as if it was machined with tolerances way too tight that gave us zero wiggle room. That combined with the fan/wiring frustrations make me feel pretty stupid spending so much money on this whole set up. I was hoping to have something nice and easily maintainable after I have spent the last few years duct taping together air filters and box fans, but this has proven to be way more of a headache and way more expensive than I initially expected it to be :(

Just assembled the Tempest fan/filter unit (flash back, Tempest was the secure computing standard I used in younger days). The parts are very well packaged, arrived without damage.

Very well done design, easy to assemble, robust and sturdy. The filter changes I can see will be much easier than my home made 2-filter units. Particularly like the mesh covers as these add a nice degree of finish.

I used the Arctic P14 Max fans which are a bit noisier than the regular P14, swapping sound for higher volume flow. What's nice is you could fit any 140mm fan to this unit, including ultra-quiet like Noctua or illuminated fans. I compensated for the higher sound pressures by placing the filter behind a chair (with lots of room for air movement) to block some sound.

Also like this could be run directly off 12V in a vehicle or RV.

All around elegant and innovative design! Thanks Nukit!

Great product. I purchased 3 for my classroom. It's solid, looks good, the fans run relatively quiet compared to commercial air cleaners. At the time of purchase, finding the recommended fans was a bit of a challenge and they were more expensive than I had budgeted for, but not prohibitively so. The assembly instructions were easy to follow. The only tricky part for me was the cable management, but once I figured it out with the first build, I was able to assemble the other two much more quickly.

For customer service, the seller responds quickly. One of the kits was missing a small part and the seller went above and beyond to handle that for me.

Top-notch. Truly a "buy it for life" product. With the PC fan-based design, you'll frequently ask yourself if it's even running, because it's so quiet. Thanks, Nukit!