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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.

5 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Are we going to get religious about the subject? by Z00L00K · · Score: 4, Interesting
    The idea of using a Stirling engine is actually not bad, but you may also be able to run peltier elements backwards, in which case you wouldn't get any mechanical problems related to moving parts.

    But even better would be if the energy loss could be decreased in the first place. Heat produced by a computer is actually only annoying.

    The Stirling engine was invented by Reverend Dr. Robert Stirling.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  2. They need a rechargeable battery. by Wolfier · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Especially if it only uses waste heat to drive itself.

    How much waste heat can they get from a modern power-efficient CPU? Let's see the thermal dissipation:

    AMD Athlon x2 BE2300 or Inten Penryn. Both at about a few Watts at idle, and 60 (AMD)-90 (Penryn) Watts under load - so average let's say is 30W, assuming a box idles more.

    30Wx70% = 21W for a fan. That's PLENTY for moving a fan - if the CPU is doing work.

    However, at idle, you may only get 4 Watts if you're at 70%. However the fan speeds don't necessarily drop by that much in a normal computer that you see. Probably due to an engineered safety margin, but the fan is not getting a lot.

    So unless the heat charges a battery and the fan is drawing from that battery, they may not be able to produce enough fan speed at idle.

    And of course, using a battery lowers your total efficiency to around 40%. Again, even if you cut the 21W to 13W, it's still plenty to drive a fan. So the question is, how they're going to use the excess energy to charge a battery to use when the CPU is idle.

    1. Re:They need a rechargeable battery. by cnettel · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The main reason for this is wear and tear on fans. Bringing a DC motor to a total stop and starting it again is expensive. Heck, too many systems are delivered in a preconfigured case with no fan-speed adjustment at all. If the temperature is too low to drive the fan, it should not be needed. If that's not true, it's just as much of a problem at full speed as at idle.

  3. Re:Why? by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You got it totally wrong. If I have to be specific, then here it is: If you paid attention to anything in the article, you would know that this is a northbridge cooler. I have yet to own a computer with a fan just for the northbridge. As far as I'm concerned, it's unnecessary in any properly designed system.

  4. Re:Pff by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Aye on the steampunk. The engine could power a small hand-wound dynamo that heats up the boiler for the steam effect you need for those "special" web sites. Don't forget the three colour LED's you need to light the steam.

    Efficient? Sorry, what's that? Yes, I know we're just re-using heat that would otherwise be wasted, but we'd be getting multidimensional cool...

    --
    Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear