Okay, try not to let your mind get blown by the possible time-space paradox we're about to illustrate, but MSI's supposedly introducing a new
ECOlution motherboard at CeBIT with an "air powered cooler" that operates on the Stirling Engine Theory to transform the thermal output of its chipset into the kinetic energy necessary to power that same chipset's fan. Of course, as the fan cools the heatsink it deprives itself of energy, supposedly the piston affixed to the crankshaft pulls back down, giving it another potential surge when its heat rebuilds. Supposedly it works at 70% efficiency, so we'll just let the thermodynamics geeks in the audience mull over the possibility and audacity of it all -- they certainly seem to have given up on
Steorn at this point.
Update: CG video demo posted after the break, via
TweakTown. Thanks, Lin.
posted Feb 29th 2008 3:31AM
wow this is a duhhh idea. i dont see any practical use for desktops but if this could be made small enough for laptops better battery life is a sure thing.
wow i've never been the first to post.
The idea that every watt is valuable is what is important, here.
Anandtech has a great article on three and four gpu systems, and many budget enthusiasts with 500W PSU's aren't going to be able to keep up. Dual ATI x2's will suck up nearly 550W's, alone. Add that to the 130W quadcore processor, and you're going to need an 800W PSU just to meet the minimum req.
wow your comment is a duhhh idea. i don't see any trace of common sense on it
//Doing the same work but using less energy is always good, no matter what soviet_vexxer thinks
brian-nice name btw
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/186
every watt matters HAHA
How great would the temperature fluctuations be? If the chip has to heat up and cool down many times a second what adverse effects would this have on the life of the chip?
@darklight
for what this will cost why not use something better for a desktop. laptops arent always connected to a wall.
whoops found a better psu.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/05/ultra-products-unveils-2000-watt-x3-atx-power-supply/
You're right on the laptop part, but I think it also makes sense on a desktop...
Not that you will save alot of money being this on it's early stages (maybe later, when it's super-ultra-mass produced), it's just for technological advance's sake.. letting energy out into nothing _while_ you could recover it and do something useful with it is just not right
darklight i agree i guess you're thinking of mid to low end while i was thinking of high end. this would be cool on those green pc's as well.
This is pure genius design, and your 1,100watt power supply isnt what this is about.
Taking a fan out of your pc reduces the electricity used, in turn saving energy.
Ok so this will save $1/£0.50 a year, but times that by 10million pcs, thats a lot of energy saved.
A little product that saves little but affects a LOT of people are better than one product that helps just the 5 people that can afford it.
BTW, apart from when your gaming/video editing, when do you need a quadcore 8gig ramm dual GPU rig? you dont, i have 2 pcs, one for gaming & one for everything else, saves me around £2 a week in electric.
That's just plain cool. I want to see more of this on *every* motherboard that doesn't come with waterblocks.
hell, even include it with the water block boards... let the engine pump the fluid if possible. ;) I've never played with a sterling. Not sure how much "oomph" it has.
stirling engines of good build quality have quite some power. i had one for about 50$ and i got to about 70RPM with a nice fan on it. plus they would self regulate because it depends on the heat of the cpu so the hotter it gets the faster it will go. i think this is really clever and stirling engines are far move more efficient than most engines.
i just hope people arent just going to discard this great idea in the simple and clever but not appealing to dumb people pile...
Clever.
This reminds me of those little fans you can sit on the top of a wood stove. A Stirling engine, I think?
I should read the article first. They discuss it in there, don't ya know!
I wonder one thing, did they think of using a fan powered by the Seebeck Effect? Seems like it would be more efficient.
Exactly, it's just a Stirling engine on a processor. Not that revolutionary. But a good application.
It looks like a toilet
What I find interesting is that the heat is still kept inside the "box" until some other cooling system moves it outside the box. It has always been my query as to why keep the box hot?
I have developed a cooling system that is powered by the heat from the processor but the heat is converted to electricity and powers a cooling pump which then pumps a cooling liquid to a vented system that is outside of the "box" and any extra electricity is used to power my 52" LCD TV and entertainment system. Plus holiday lights!!! ... ;)
If you believe that then I have some swamp land in Nevada to sell you!
I think this will only do enough of a job to allow your processor to overheat and fry. I need more data to actually see if this will work in a real life situation as opposed to a Sim Life computer!
Cheers!
the blog-commenting geniuses of the internet have spoken. shut this project down. these developers of new technology obviously have no idea what they are doing and have wasted everyones time.
I think this system is here to cool the Northbridge/Southbridge chips, not the CPU. RTFA.
how much for that swamp?
if we could get one of these in a via motherboard (like the one in the ars article), we could have one sweet green machine.
Wow nice. The hotter the CPU the faster it spins, right?
Wrong. The hotter the CPU the sooner the BSOD comes :D
I really hope they won't burn too many processors with this till they realize this CPU cooler is just not enough.
Ok, we save some power (and a bit of nature, probably, since its sooo green power) by not using CPU cooler's wattage.
How do you think, would turning off the PC for the night save more power (duh, more nature?) than this cooler?
Now the ultimate question: how many wood you need to chop down and burn to make enough electricity for the factory which makes these "green" coolers? I think not making them at all will save more power (nature?)... Being totally green doesn't make you small green presidents though.
Just my humble opinion.
This is a northbridge chipset cooler, NOT a cpu cooler.
Sorry, my mistake.
Your just a fucking idiot.
What do you think that current cpu coolers grow on trees, that they currently take no engery to create. Do you actually believe what you write or is it just coming out your arse.
Without people like the Wright brothers we wouldnt have flight, do you know taht people dont fly using they're first idea. Did you know that they're first idea was a failure. It has to start somewhere. They can improve, its a good idea.
Hmm, you are onto something bob, a perpetuum mobile, put trees under a movable glass and let them grow and they push the glass and we got free energy!
(glass because the sun is needed obviously)
It's a very very VERY slow engine though.
Actually if you use algea in a large tank with a cylinder on the end it's faster I guess.
Instead of buying a motherboard with a green cooler, plant a tree. One million trees is still greener :D
Or you could do both!
Genius
This is a great idea, its about time someone used it.
you obviously do not see sarcasm when you read it....
just need more data...
..|..
What are you going to save with this, 1 or 2 watts maybe?
0.1 watt. Will burn more power to produce it than it ever saves...
Everybody seems to be getting it the wrong way. The CPU needs to be at a certain temperature range to function efficiently. This temperature is not the same for humans. We like it to be cooler, but we are not CPUs.
So for a CPU, the slight temperature drop is great. Chilling the CPU is bad and will require more energy to move the electrons (or holes for the physics guys) around the CPU. Please don't tell me that overclocked systems need to be chilled because I know that and this doesn't apply here.
As for the green side of this topic, one million computers saving 1 Watt each = 1 MegaWatt. Not bad at all.
P.S. the article is about a particular chipset but still applies to any chips not fried yet.
That's why so many people don't use their indicators in traffic, it's only 0.1 watts but think of the savings when everybody doesn't use them ;)
Damn, and here I thought it was lack of turn signal fluid.
@ Generic
No offense, but it sounds like you're taking this the wrong way.
(1) This is not a CPU cooler. The picture shows a fan with a footprint too small for current processors. It'll probably cool the Northbridge/Southbridge, which usually don't need a lot of cooling.
"The CPU needs to be at a certain temperature range to function efficiently. This temperature is not the same for humans." —Generic
(2i) What?! That's definitely the other way around. I don't know about you, but we humans function best at 98.6°F.
"Chilling the CPU is bad and will require more energy to move the electrons (or holes for the physics guys) around the CPU." —Generic
(2ii) CPUs follow the typical physics of metals. Conductivity is inversely proportional to temperature, no exceptions. As a metal (or any substance) approaches absolute zero, the electric conductivity rises. Have you heard of superconductivity? Frozen, compressed helium would conduct better than room-temperature copper. The optimal temperature for energy efficiency and operating conditions is as low as possible (but above 0 K!).
Also, why are you talking about holes? Only when physicists write text books to explain why the current is visualized as running opposite the electron path are holes talked about. K.I.S.S!
And just a note to everyone: The northbridge normally doesn't need active cooling. Even in high-end boards, it'll use the ambient breeze from the CPU fan. Some high-performance-for-price (GA-P35-DS3L *AHEM*) sacrifice quality in that regard and the northbridge doesn't effectively wick away heat, but whatever.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059
Northbridge does need cooling, this is 2008 and the damn things are starting to draw more juice than the CPU, and also start to become more expensive than CPU's to boot.
The main point here is heat is being removed and turned into mechanical energy, you might as well remove the fan.
Unfortunately I find it hard to believe the process is anything more than a gimmicky. It's a giant mechanical heatsink with a novelty fan on it.
The fan blows across the heatsink. Can't imagine that does anything useful ...
Yeah, because spinning once or twice every ten seconds is going to help. Or perhaps I'm forgetting The Magic Of the Stirling Engine and Free Energy.
It's rubbish.
Discover the magic of google video and Stirling engines that spin continuously.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4654319024851860269&q=stirling+engine+hand&total=28&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3
That's good, pretend I said something I didn't. I'm bagging the whole concept, not your boner for stirling engines. Faked free energy is still faked.
It seems pretty obvious that if the CPU can safely reach the kinds of temperatures to drive a fan at anywhere near normal fan speeds, you might as well get rid of the fan.
The key point here is that energy is lost along the way to friction, inefficient heat capture, etc. at a high rate. Hence the fan being useless showy guff.
Why would you try to speed up the fan by putting more heat into it?
There's no reason why you can't use gearing to speed up the fan.
You say this design is too inefficient to gain any benefit, yet when
you are using an electric fan you have 100% inefficiency because all
this heat energy is being wasted. Most of us drive to work using a
thermodynamic engine every day, I think you underestimate their
abilities. There is no free / fake energy here .. there is heat
energy and a mechanism for turning it into mechanical energy.
There's little difference between what this does and a steam engine
.. it's not some miracle machine.
I guess in the end it will all come down to how fast and how efficient the design is for this type of energy distribution.
/sarcasm And knowing how we all just KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW MSI is the GREATEST at making efficient product this should be great! \sarcasm
< sigh >
Seriously though its going to come down to just how much the fan will spin and with what amount of heat.
I give em credit for being the first though.
iv seen sterling engines that will run by simply placing them on your hand. the difference of about 2 or 3 degrease centigrade is enough, and these engines arent even of great build quality. it would be hard to run a cpu on this but a north/southbridge would allow for a good cooling system that stands alone and that is quite effective when the temperature disparity is of 50°C. plus just by simply turning the engine it would take away some head from the engine, let alone with a heat-sink and a fan...
Did some of you read the article and take a detailed look at the picture?
The CPU socket is to the NW of the cooler, the ram is to the NE and the PCI/AGP slots are to the SE of it...making it a northbridge chipset cooler, NOT a CPU cooler.
It's not a whole bunch but it's better than powering a fan using the board. This tech applied elsewhere could lead to lower PC power requirements, which is always a good thing, so hopefully they'll continue and find more robust solutions that can be applied to CPUs, memory and graphics cards.
will it though?
If energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred from one form to another then the overall energy requirements will be the same for the system, because you still need the electricity to generate the heat, to generate the movement.
it comes down to whether this system can be more efficient than a standard heatsink and electric fan. If it can, then it'll save money, if not, it wont.
But I salute them for trying, there must be a merit to this system somewhere - otherwise they wouldnt have done it. So go MSI!!
G
G:
The energy is already being generated as heat. The difference is instead of being spent heating the air around it the heat powers a fan. The fan isn't going to draw extra power from the PSU just use what's already being "wasted".
OMG, HEAT-POWERED FANS! 1337 H4X!
Cool idea, but how long before the fan seizes up?
Erm...Generic:
Physics denotes that electrons move faster when things are cooler (heat = resistance) this is why when you use 30awg wire to wire your house, it all melts.
cooler is better in all chips that require fast refreshes of data. Thats why there are cryo-coolers for the extreme users...
*awaits flames*
G
In a sense it's true that keeping it constantly cool would increase the lifetime of the chip due to less 'wear', but with systems being outdated in 6 months currently that's not much of an issue, if it last 10 instead of 12 years doesn't matter.
As for the maximum attainable speed itself, not an issue with a northbridge surely, since it's fixed in functionality and OC'ing it is not really useful.
Since the thing has a proper heatsink attached I'm guessing it won't turn at all unless you are pushing the system like with raytracing or playing games and then it'll nicely come into action.
So nice and silent?
I don't see any practical use for this, you're still limited by the ambient temperature in the case. It also has to be fairly expensive, sterlings require some tight tolerances and even if you subtract the cost of a fan what's the point?
so you're saying there is no practical use for fans inside the case, and that we should only concern ourselves with dropping the ambient air temperature inside the case?
as far as expense:
there are alot of computers out there with chipsets that need cooling.
as a result, this type of cooler would be mass produced.
as a result, single unit cost is mitigated.
I didn't mean to imply we don't need fans only that this solution is a non starter. Depending on where the cost comes in you're going to be competing with some viable & proven technologies. If noise is the only concern then there are other ways to get there. Reliablity is a big concern, look at the fans in your case after a year or so, they are caked with lint, dust whatever, what would happen to this if that happened, is it powerful enough to overcome that added mass & drag? Look what Sony did with the PS3, they used a really big, low RPM fan, much more reliable than this & quiet. I think the goal of any design engineer is to use as little technology as possible to get the job done, this while cute, is over engineered for the job.
"Depending on where the cost comes in you're going to be competing with some viable & proven technologies."
"I think the goal of any design engineer is to use as little technology as possible to get the job done, this while cute, is over engineered for the job."
True enough, but there was a time when the automobile had to compete with the viable and proven horse drawn buggy technology. The automobile was overly complex but was upheld by the benefits it provided.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it is over engineered. Sterling engine technology was around before electricity was powering peoples homes. Indeed it is more mechanically complex just as the automobile was, but bearings in DC fans are also subject to wear.
"Is it powerful enough to overcome that added mass & drag? Look what Sony did with the PS3, they used a really big, low RPM fan, much more reliable than this & quiet."
Electric fans have to deal with the same problems with mass and drag. As far as what sony did .. there's nothing to stop you from putting a bigger fan on this.
A few other things to take into consideration with a sustained system like this is...!
Even when the system is shut down the fan would theoretically keep going no ?
And even better , when the system is started there won't be that much of a what i would call A..
" Cold boot "shock" "
...see.... Everytime a electronic ?"gadget"? .. ehem**... is started there is a brief "shock" to the system... which does 2 bad things...
A.) Dramatically decreases the life of the part.
B.) Uses up allot of electricity on its start. (much like when you start a non fuel injected vehicle, you would be using up allot of fuel on startup)
And a few other things too i just thought of... , I don't think this was made to be an "efficient" design by msi more of a "green" design.
So did they hit there mark or not ?
I'm gonna bet on yes.
Whatya guys think about my cold start and shutdown observations ?
this is very cool, but unfortunately I think it falls under the catorgory of "gimmick"
V__I disagree see below.__V
Now that all the narrow minded people have spoken, i would like to add think about this on a Large scale say at a power plant you could use the excess heat generated to spin the fan that is hooked to a different generator to make more power off the unused heat, or even use the same idea to make a nuclear reactor cooler by hooking it to the top of the rod banks. and even if no one ever uses it i may cause and innovation some where else in a different field of science.
First of all, it really should be said that there are no thermodynamic laws being broken here. All of the energy to power both the chip set and the fan come from your local power company. I know that the thermo comment in the article was likely a joke, but this is very different than the "Steom" project or whatever it was where he was making MORE heat. This is just using the excess heat from the chip.
That's all, I'll stop pointing out the obvious now.
A microgenerator could be attached to the fan, thereby powering the CPU. And any surplus generated energy could power the memory, screen and hard disk.
Wow...this kind of like a suicide machine. It's constantly trying to kill itself, no?
I'm dumbfounded by all the people who seem to be strongly against ANY attempt to actually improve efficiency.
Is this some kind of misplaced backlash against global warming hype? The points that this doesn't save MUCH energy--and that the device takes more energy to build than what it will save--are really beside the point. From an engineering standpoint, the idea of using heat energy to help dissipate itself is actually pretty cool (pardon the pun).
While this particular development may not be perfect, the engineers will doubtless find a way to improve on it.
Its humans 'what we dont know about, be scared of' nature.
Global warming is affecting us, but because we dont know which way it will swing (Or when and how it would) people fear it and attack it (and people that talk about it) with brute force insted of thinking.
This has been going on for centurys, many a great mind got killed for 'blasphamy' and 'crimes against nature' or 'the state' for saying something like 'the earth revolves around the sun'.
But the idea is starting to stick in peoples minds, people ARE changing - we now have recycle pickups in the UK, Energy saving lightbulbs are being installed everywhere and people are thinking about how they live affects other people.
The Global Warming bashing will subside once they accept the idea, of course there will always be a energy saving version of the KKK or people telling gils to 'get back to the kitchen' but as a whole teh world has rose above that.
I'd like to thank the Greenpeace and other Org's memebrs that are in prison, been stalked, sued and attacked by big copmpanys for trying to get our attention, the inventer who got trodden on and told to drop his idea because it was energy efficient yet not 'cool enough for modern day markets' and that one guy somewhere that just turned around one day and just said 'we're killing ourself, i must tell someone'.
This seems like a great gimmick to displace consumers of their money in yet another green effort!
To drive the piston you are relying on expansion and contraction of the cooling gas/fluid which equates to a temperature fluxuation (excludes state changes and enthalpy of formation). This fluxuation would invariably change the efficiency of the chip likely in the +/- efficiency range. So the chip would likely draw .5 to 1 more watt if it used 20 watts.
Current fans running at full efficiency use .1-.2 watts. So this technology would likely use more energy than just adding a fan. At best the technology would be a energy wash with significant more cost in building and energy use to create the item!
Temperature fluxuations are dampened by the heat sink. You cannot blindly assume the electric fan maintains a lower average temperature. In a system where both implementations provide equal cooling, the heat powered fan will certainly be more efficient.
The savings are obvious .. a fan powered by your PSU vs a fan powered by wasted heat. While it might personally save you a negligible amount of electricity, there are alot of computers in this world besides yours.
To ameridan:
Temperature fluxuations are not dampened by the heat sink. Go back to you thermo book and look up sterling cycles. The liquid coolant cools absorbs the heat which is is not transfered until isothermal expansion of the cooling liquid. The liquid is then cooled at which time the heating blocks latent heat is building awaiting for the cooled liquid to transfer back. So there very much will be a build up of energy on the chip followed by cooling. Varibilty in temperature equates to variability in energy consumption.
You must look at the thermal efficiencies of the chip vs. the thermal efficiency of the process to decide which approach is more efficient. This sterling engine is only efficient when large temperature gradients are present similiar to heat pump cycles. So this believed savings is often wasted and thats the point. You believe you are recovering energy but at what cost? Chips become less efficient with increased temperature and variability. So you trade chip efficiency for that of an electric fan. Once this calcution is complete you likely will find the electric fan a more efficient use of resources since you'll exchange for load on the chip.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4654319024851860269&q=stirling+engine+hand&total=28&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3
Where is this large temperature gradient you speak of? That guys hand must be cycling from uncomfortably hot to icy cold according to you.
The area between the Sterling engine and the chipset is a heat reservoir and provides constant, consistent heat flux. The temperature of the material will cycle but certainly not to the point of affecting chipset efficiency. The cycles are close together and not defined by extreme differences in temperature. The material subjected to these cycles is not an ideal conductor of heat and thus will dampen any cyclic temperatures before they reach the surface of the chip. The heatsink which the fan is blowing on will also absorb / dampen the temperature fluctuations of the material between the chip and the Sterling engine.
Thisis saving on a lot of fronts.
>XDS's 'Cold Boot' idea (see above)
>XDS's 'Cooling after shutdown' (inturn extending CPU life)
>Saving energy from less fans in system
>Saving energy by incresing the efficiency of the CPU, thus getting more work per clock done.
Replying to other comments...
>>"Wow nice. The hotter the CPU the faster it spins, right?
Wrong. The hotter the CPU the sooner the BSOD comes"
nope, your wrong.
The hotter it becomes, the faster the fan spins, the more heat withdrawn, the faster heat is drawn AWAY from the CPU - stopping that BSOD - with the added benifit of not having to wait for a temperature guage to read that its getting hot or using any more energy.
>>"0.1 watt. Will burn more power to produce it than it ever saves..."
Currently fans cost money to make, and to run, this would cost money to make, but not to run. A energy saving lightbulb may be $5 more but saves $10 a year and lasts longer.
>>"If energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred from one form to another then the overall energy requirements will be the same for the system, because you still need the electricity to generate the heat, to generate the movement."
This is energy that is currently wasted and not used anyhow, the system wont need to produce more energy to run this, its just recycling the energy wasted of running the chips.
>>"In a sense it's true that keeping it constantly cool would increase the lifetime of the chip due to less 'wear', but with systems being outdated in 6 months currently that's not much of an issue, if it last 10 instead of 12 years doesn't matter."
Go look in a bank, a office or any large scale corp, there still running Pentium 3's and old hack computers cause they do the job they are for, and dont need more electric to do it. What about them peeps that run them for 24/7 yet only upgrade every 5-10 years? even then you can send your chip to a recycling centre to be redistributed at schools, librarys or even another country.
>>"I don't see any practical use for this, you're still limited by the ambient temperature in the case."
Erm.. so why is there fans on CPU's/Northbridge chips then? the chips need to be cooled, the heat from them need to be transfered to the local air first - then the PSU fan (or extra case fan some peeps have) would take it out the box. This design increases the efficiency of the chip to local air exchange.
This is a bad idea. Look at modern high-efficiency furnaces and water heaters for an example:
Heating air to make it move around is a poor use of energy. To get the same amount of air movement, you could spend a lot less energy to just spin a fan. A modern furnace extracts so much heat from the combustion gases that they won't reliably rise up a chimney. So, they use a fan to force the issue. It takes less energy to spin the fan than the additional heat extracted from the gases, so it's a net win.
In this case, you're letting the chip get extra hot in order to produce enough thermal differential to start the engine. If the ambient air happens to be very cold then the chip is still in a comfortable range when this happens, but in most cases, the chip's lifespan will be shortened by the extra heat, causing early failure and replacement, which costs energy well in excess of what you would've just spent to spin a fan in the first place.
When your goal is to move heat, you should do work to move heat. Using the heat to do work generally involves bad trade-offs. That's the case here.
The chip already gets extra hot. This is just converting the heat, which is already generated, to spin a fan.
i would like the heat of my cpu and gpu use converted steam power just like they are trying to do in cars...could have used something like this on by amd desktop processor powered HP laptop that would reach boiling point and shut down...instead of using notebook cooling pad, maybe the heat could be harvested by steam and put to good use
What if you tied all of the heat generating components together with a single heat sync matrix and cooled the whole mess with a larger one of these babies. It would cool the entire system. Good for proprietary desktops of specific design. Perfect for laptops.
Less electrons pumped into the system to move heat out = more efficiency.
The speed of the fan would instantaneously increase/decrease with amount of heat applied to it just as in a thermostatically controlled electric fan. The fan naturally spins at different speeds given the amount of total heat inside (and outside) the system because sterling engines work on temperature differentials.
This doesn't appear to be a CPU cooling solution, but rather a Northbridge one (as implemented by MSI). Given that many NB chips are only cooled by passive heatsinks or pipes, this is a welcome change as long as the size is kept under reasonable limits.
Wow, this is a 'duh'' idea that I am pleasantly surprised to see someone work out. It'd speed up as the processor drew more heat and lose speed as it cooled down, meaning it'd help attain maximum efficiency. Bring this to the market and I will buy it.
In fact, i can see numerous apps other than processors: graphics cards would benefit from reduce power consumption, chipset cooling could work like this....
The possibilities to reduce power consumption here are endless. Good show MSI.
looks like we knocked out the fareastgizmos server... I wanted to read more. Sterling engines are pretty interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine#Action_of_a_beta_type_Stirling_engine
You can make one out of a couple soda cans and some tubes:
http://www.rotarystirlingengines.com/rotacola.htm
I'm surprised no one thought of this before! Come on now, It's a Sterling Engine. It just moves thermal energy from one place to another. If nothing else, I imagine the steampunks will be crawling all over it!
This is a briliiant idea, and I always wondered why the hell anybody on this Earth could not design anything like this. (I dont mean a motherboard fan that uses chips energy particularly, but anything that uses the energy which is considered to be lost to create something useful efficiently)
Well I have thought this before, and this is just perfect. The world is approaching to a state that energy will be the most valuable gift to humanity. People are trying to use natural sources much less and recycled sources more to get the maximum efficiency out of anything, energy or product or simply waste!
Transferring heat energy which is something unwanted to mechanical energy would be a good place to start. If only someone could come with a efficient liquid cooling system like this...
People may find this product useless or inefficient, but anyone who calls the idea behind it stupid IS stupid.
"In this case, you're letting the chip get extra hot in order to produce enough thermal differential to start the engine."
there will always be a temperature differential, this system takes advantage of it while an electric fan does not. Stirling engines operate at a variety of temperature differentials and do not necessitate that your chip get hotter than it normally does with an electric fan.
I like the idea overall but I see 3 major problems with it.
1) Sterling engines (as this is obviously one) use some kind of a flexible membrane in their design if I recall right. This membrane represents the weakpoint in their design and will likely wear out faster than any of the other parts.
2) If you watch the video, the fan is pulling air in through the fins attached to the heatpipe and then across the top of the unit. Sterling engines operate by having a hot side and a cold side (even if this is only a few degrees difference). Putting the heatsink fins in frotn of the airflow means you will be pulling HOT air across the top of the sterling engine where we see more fins sticking straight up. This will heat up the top of the sterling engine and reduce the efficiency of the engine overall. They simply need to turn the unit around and reverse the direction of the fan (or its blades) which will draw cool(er) air across the top of the sterling engine, producing a colder temp on the top of the engine, and then push that air through the heatsink fins to cool the chipset itself.
3) Sterling engines usually need some kind of a little push to get them started spinning. MSI would need to figure out how to kick start the fan blades for this to work. And the kickstart may have to be delayed 30 seconds after boot since right at boot time the chipset may not be that hot and the fan could stall out if the kick start was sent too early.
For those who said earlier that heat is not being removed from the chipset only used to spin the fan, look at the heatpipes that go up into the fin assembly. That whole peice of this design IS cooling the chipset.
For those who said that the temperature fluctuations will kill the chip faster than a normal fan, I would ask where you think these fluctuations will come from? The chipset will reach a certain temp and the fan will spin at a certain speed and there may be a slight spike in the temp of the chipset while the sterling engine adjusts, but they will both very quickly reach equilibrium and will have a constant temp that I believe is overall lower than the temp of the chipset with a passive cooler attached. And this is all accomplished with NO additional electricity to power the FAN.
And for the Skeptics that say this will never work to cool a CPU, I think your wrong. It may not cool a Q6600 or QX9770, but think of the more energy efficient chips and the fact that you can upscale this design a bit and it should work just fine. Keep in mind that people used to passively cool low end P4s and those things were heaters in themselves.
combine this design with a bigger heatsink fin assembly and bigger fan, turn it around like I said earlier, and it would easily cool a AMD BE-2300 or Intel Mobile Penryn chip all day long.
-Casper42
While I admire the geekiness of the Sterling Engine heatsink, I can see one fatal flaw...
Sterling Engines are notoriously noisy. That defeats most people's desire for a quiet computer, but even more seriously - the mechanical vibration will probably destroy the chip it's attached to.
If you want to build a fun version using some of the same principles, this little paper version takes 5 minutes to make and will garner lots of co-worker comments:
From MAKE: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/02/build_a_heatdriven_monito.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890
@ Generic
No offense, but it sounds like you're taking this the wrong way.
(1) This is not a CPU cooler. The picture shows a fan with a footprint too small for current processors. It'll probably cool the Northbridge/Southbridge, which usually don't need a lot of cooling.
"The CPU needs to be at a certain temperature range to function efficiently. This temperature is not the same for humans." —Generic
(2i) What?! That's definitely the other way around. I don't know about you, but we humans function best at 98.6°F.
"Chilling the CPU is bad and will require more energy to move the electrons (or holes for the physics guys) around the CPU." —Generic
(2ii) CPUs follow the typical physics of metals. Conductivity is inversely proportional to temperature, no exceptions. As a metal (or any substance) approaches absolute zero, the electric conductivity rises. Have you heard of superconductivity? Frozen, compressed helium would conduct better than room-temperature copper. The optimal temperature for energy efficiency and operating conditions is as low as possible (but above 0 K!).
Also, why are you talking about holes? Only when physicists write text books to explain why the current is visualized as running opposite the electron path are holes talked about. K.I.S.S!
And just a note to everyone: The northbridge normally doesn't need active cooling. Even in high-end boards, it'll use the ambient breeze from the CPU fan. Some high-performance-for-price (GA-P35-DS3L *AHEM*) sacrifice quality in that regard and the northbridge doesn't effectively wick away heat, but whatever.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059
Looks like a toilet. :D
A couple of observations...
I have a basic understanding of how the sterling theory works.
Looking at what i see , i don't think this is based on that theory whatsoever.
So. I don't know who brought that up in the first place but they could have been a little more explicit on what they where referin to!!!!!
And damnit thunder.... Who ever said they where against the idea ?
Some people are just skeptical is all.
I chastise you for saying such a thing.
Just to comment about the person that mentioned this would need a "kick start" in order to help it work , I could see how this could be a user initiated "knetic" start feature.
EG. Where the power button could pull double duty. , By some form of spring loading action.
And to anyone making rude comments about it looking like a toilet and what not . , I motion that the editor ban your mac address forever. :)
Bye Bye.
Regards,
XDS
A simple low-tech Stirling engine that you can buy and build from a kit can easily spin at several hundred RPM with a big enough heat differential - like from a hot cup of coffee to ambient air temp. The overal efficiency of converting heat to mechanical energy of these machines is very low - a few percent. However a high tech manufactured one could be much higher, and really you're just looking for a few watts to spin a fan to send air over cooling fins which requires low torque. Suitably designed it could easily provide a the kind of RPM your average CPU cooler fan provides. The main problem is it would be way more expensive than a regular electric fan. There may also be problems with getting the fan to self-start - but it depends on the engine design.
Fan's spinning backwards.
The XBOX 360 could use one of these.
isnt that fan spinning backwards?
I'd like to see this on a lower power appliance, like my wireless gateway/router. It only runs on 12V 500ma, but the regulator and wireless chip set get hot. Since adding a powered fan would mean spending more for a bigger power supply, this would fit a really nice niche application. My router lives longer since it is now cooled, I don't spend more money on power supplies or electricity to run the fan, and all I'm out is the engine cost and the effort of taking the top of the case off.
Would make a lot of sense for something like this, where the device runs constantly 24/7/365, maybe for 2 years...
Lets see... small 50ma fan
100ma*12VDC=1.2W/1000=.0012KW/hr. My electricity costs .145 per KW/hr, so for 2 years use that's a savings of .145*.0012*24*365*2=3.05
If the router PS can handle the extra 100ma, I'm not out $20 for a power supply. So that's a negative... If the router lasts an extra 2 years because it's now cooled more effectively, I am saving $6+$70 for the doubled router life (either way).
It might be worth it. I guess to really figure this out, you would look at alternatives, like simply adding aluminum chip set heat sinks and pulling the top off the case.. those run $20 with adhesive, but I don't know how much heat they remove versus the fan, nor how long the life of the product is extended. Nor do I know the cost of the fan or if I can move it to another product when the router finally dies. Some Stirling engines last for years..
Tough call on the numbers alone. But having a Stirling engine fan, well the neato factor makes it an obvious choice!
Oops, I meant 100ma fan. the dinky 50's work but are noisy unless you spend a lot... 100 ma's are generally bigger and cheaper. I got the calculation right, just didn't update the text.
-=RB