Friday, February 29th 2008
MSI Working on ‘Powerless’ CPU Cooler
MSI has taken a step to try and reduce computer power consumption slightly by building a processor fan that is powered using only heat given off by the CPU. As the processor heats up, it causes air inside a piston to expand. That forces out the piston rod, which in turn causes the fan to spin and blow air over the heatsink, as shown in the first image below. This then helps to cool the air inside the piston, causing it to contract again, pulling the piston rod back in and cooling the CPU without needing any extra electricity. The technology is by no means a modern idea - it uses a mechanism invented in 1816 by Scottish engineer Robert Stirling - but it's never before been used on a large scale for computing purposes. MSI's fan is capable of converting 70% of the heat energy given off by the CPU into kinetic energy, and the company plans to demo the cooler at next week's CeBIT show in Hanover. However, there is no news of when this fan will become available for purchase, or what prices will be like.
Source:
Reg Hardware
54 Comments on MSI Working on ‘Powerless’ CPU Cooler
It would be nice to see some of the heat put to a purpose, as up to now all we ever did was simply try to remove the heat.
Then again, I'm a sucker for anything oddball.:D
TBH, I don't think this thing will be all too helpful for CPU temps.
I wonder if its noisy...
Ok, more fan's perhaps.. But what happens if the "thing" that is holding the piston in place starts to get hot from friction, then what??
I think we have to wait and see on this one
Wind turbines... need lead acid batteries... so you tell me whats got less of an environmental impact... using a bit of power from the socket on the wall or constantly buying lead acid batteries and dumping them in the skip when they finished.
also... im not sure that im sold on the idea of "low power equivalents" of CPU's and GFX cards... if something is to be powerfull and exude power, it needs power coming in...
I think that for everyday users who want to check emails and stuff then getting a clow power celeron is great... so is riding a bicycle to work if you dont already have enough stress in your working day to accomodate it.
Me personally.... I like powerfull things and im not bothered about how many watts my gfx card uses becuase I diddnt buy it to marvel about its efficiency... same goes for the rest of my rig.
I guess its like drag racers versus the totoya prius :P
Its what you bought it for and what you want it to do
You'll need a really shitty CPU to be able to use this fan and not melt. I don't know if Crysis will run with on a celeron.
perhaps in future it will be neccessary to breathe into a gas mask becuase our atmosphere is completely buggered by the amount of pollution that weve exhausted into it... but right now its not neccessary and pointless
also the only way that we can generate power off heat so far (thermal energy generators) is by heating water and making steam to spin turbines.... and heating air to spin turbines...
both take enourmous amounts of power unfortunately to spin that turbine in the first place