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MSI Develops a Heat-Driven Cooler

Posted by Soulskill on from the it's-not-easy-being-green dept.

V!NCENT tips us to a write-up about an addition to MSI's Ecolution motherboard which harvests heat from the chipset to power a fan. The device is based on a Stirling engine. The heat from the chipset expands a trapped gas, which pushes against a piston to generate power. The article contains a YouTube video of how the device works. According to MSI, the device has 70% efficiency.

3 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Please define efficiency for me by Colin+Smith · · Score: 4, Informative

    Because I thought to get 70% efficiency there would have to be a couple of thousand degrees C difference between the hot and cold sides. Or have AMD decided laptops are not their core market for the next generation of chips?

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    1. Re:Please define efficiency for me by Naughty+Bob · · Score: 5, Informative

      That being said I'd be surprised if they were as high as 70%
      Prepare to keep those eyebrows exactly where they are- The 70% refers to the transfer of heat energy to air pressure 'power' within the piston. It's still impressive, but the +70% claim relates only to one step of the process.
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      "Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
  2. Re:Hmm... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Informative

    No, it works best when the temperature difference between the CPU and the surrounding ist highest. Which usually is the case due to the CPU getting hotter.

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    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.