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MSI Develops a Heat-Driven Cooler

Posted by Soulskill on Sun Mar 02, 2008 01:18 PM
from the it's-not-easy-being-green dept.
Power Hardware
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.
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Submission: MSI develops a heat-driven cooler by V!NCENT (1105021)
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  • Good thing it is 70% efficient (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 02 2008, @01:20PM (#22616422)
    otherwise all that waste heat would be wasted.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by PMBjornerud (947233)
      If you want to remove that waste heat before it burns the chip to a cinder, then yes, you probably want some degree of efficiency.

  • Pff (Score:5, Funny)

    by illegibledotorg (1123239) on Sunday March 02 2008, @01:22PM (#22616428)
    MSI just threw this together so that their lead engineer could finish his bitchin' Steampunk case mod.
    • what other reason would there be?

      though things like this should be used more often. a low power heat pump to supply extra power. A few extra watts come in handy.

      Can you imagine an Acer laptop that can partially recharge the battery while it's running? Or at the very least power the secondary fans.
    • 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...

  • So ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by LordKaT (619540) on Sunday March 02 2008, @01:23PM (#22616434) Homepage Journal
    It has to heat itself to ... cool ... itself? Goddamnit, I hate recursion.
    • It has to heat itself to ... cool ... itself? Goddamnit, I hate recursion.

      Yes because if it wasn't heating it wouldn't need to be cooled. This is great, I wonder why it hadn't been developed earlier. Depending on the CPU and the dissipation created by the heatsink the fan doesn't need to go more than 2500rpm.

  • Please define efficiency for me (Score:5, Informative)

    by Colin Smith (2679) on Sunday March 02 2008, @01:24PM (#22616442)
    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?

     

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dreamchaser (49529)
      Efficiency is just a matter of how much of the input energy is turned into some kind of practical work, in this case spinning a fan. That being said I'd be surprised if they were as high as 70%. Sounds like eco-friendly (note the name of the motherboard) marketing to me. Still, a neat idea.

    • Re:Please define efficiency for me (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BoChen456 (1099463) on Sunday March 02 2008, @01:34PM (#22616502)

      I suspect 70% efficiency means they can reach 70% of the theoretical limit maximum at these temperatures. The theoretical limit for heat reservoirs of 55C and 25C is about 10% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_heat_engine#Carnot.27s_theorem [wikipedia.org].

      So really this fan can convert up to 7% of the waste heat. This doesn't sound very impressive, but as long as it provides a little bit of convection it'll be better than passive cooling.

    • You're absolutely correct that an ideal Carnot engine would have to have about a thousand degrees if it rejects heat to room temperature.

      Typically what's done in these cases is to compare the efficiency of the engine to the Carnot efficiency. So the claim of 70% efficiency really means that the engine is 70% as efficient as a Carnot engine at the temperatures it operates between. The real efficiency then is n_carnot*n_engine. Their real efficiency claim is therefore probably closer to 4.9%.

      But that's not

  • Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vellmont (569020) on Sunday March 02 2008, @01:29PM (#22616466)
    A fan can't draw much more than a few watts. What's the point? It seems like a complicated array of technology just to save a few watts of power. You'd be better off buying a more efficient power supply if you wanted to be "green".

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by VGPowerlord (621254) on Sunday March 02 2008, @01:33PM (#22616496) Homepage

      A fan can't draw much more than a few watts. What's the point? It seems like a complicated array of technology just to save a few watts of power. You'd be better off buying a more efficient power supply if you wanted to be "green".

      That makes the assumption that you can't do both. Why wouldn't you be able to do both?

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Jeff DeMaagd (2015) on Sunday March 02 2008, @02:12PM (#22616712) Homepage Journal
        That mechanism looks like a lot of complexity and cost to save what probably amounts to a single watt. How much more energy would it take to make that over a one watt fan? Not only that, a large passive heat sink would probably do even better, nothing to break and it would just use existing air flow. I've yet to own a computer that has or needs a fan just for the chipset, not necessarily through trying, it's not really that necessary to have.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Jeff DeMaagd (2015)
            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.

            • Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)

              by AncientPC (951874) on Sunday March 02 2008, @04:05PM (#22617564)
              In the article they referred to nVidia chipsets, and AFAIK they have been unified chipsets since nForce2 (I could be wrong). Motherboards with these chipsets usually have those tiny chipset HSFs that rattle after 6+ months, and I always end up replacing them with passive heatsinks anyway.

              But honestly, even though the chipsets can get relatively hot (35C+) passive heatsinks has worked fine for me.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by TwistedSpring (594284)
              I have yet to own a motherboard that does not have a fan on the northbridge, except for the one where I'd replaced the manufacturers fan with my own heatsink. This product isn't for that $500 PC you bought from Gateway; it's intended for the performance market. This is still kinda dumb, since fans are probably cheaper than heatsinks, and fans are definitely cheaper and more economical to manufacture than this thing. MSI are clearly doing this to grab some publicity after they realised they're being outclass

      • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by moderatorrater (1095745) on Sunday March 02 2008, @02:17PM (#22616740)

        That makes the assumption that you can't do both. Why wouldn't you be able to do both?
        You can do both, but his point is that if you're looking at the efficiency of your dollar, you'd be better buying something else that'll save you more power than this fan will. Buy a better power supply, new monitor, more power efficient CPU, better light bulbs, etc. For the amount of energy saved, it's likely that there's quite a long list of things that could save more energy for your dollar, and since you (presumably) have a finite amount of money, it'd be better to buy one of those things than this fan.

      • That makes the assumption that you can't do both. Why wouldn't you be able to do both?

        Because eventually the cost will hit the point where it exceeds what it would cost you in productivity/performance to just use a less power hungry computer.

    • Well, for one thing, with no extra complexity or power input of any kind you could have a fan that automatically speeds up as the CPU gets hotter. Not to mention that, by definition, the conversion of some of the heat into mechanical energy sucks up some of the heat.

      -:sigma.SB

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by billcopc (196330)
      True, fans don't draw much power, but they do fail quite regularly due to the electric motor wearing out, or the motherboard's fan power going dead. As a system builder I see those problems all the time. A self-powered non-electric fan would get rid of both those failure scenarios. It's not like your PC is going to stop producing heat all of a sudden - at least not while its powered on and working.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by hakr89 (719001)
        The problem with the fan isn't that it's electric, it's that it's a moving part, and moving parts wear out. Usually when a fan dies, it's not the electric motor that's wearing out, it's the bearings. The fans use brushless motors where the coil wrapped around the armature magnetically opposes the permanent magnet built into the rotor(the fan part) causing it to rotate.

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brushless_DC_electric_motor [wikipedia.org]
    • At the moment I don't see this being as big deal for home users. However for server farms the savings could be worth the investment.
    • How about saving your CPU when your electric controlled fan on your server silently bites the dust while you're away on vacation or the like? I have to replace a minimum of 1 CPU fan every year at my house and sometimes "CPU fan" is replaced by "entire motherboard, memory, etc." because a fan failed and the CPU took everything with it.

    • A fan can't draw much more than a few watts. What's the point? It seems like a complicated array of technology just to save a few watts of power.

      A fan needs a control system, sensors to judge the temperature of the processor, algorithms to tell it when to turn on and off.

      This thing is SO geeky and elegant, it will cool an advanced bit of digital processing technoogy with a very analogous 19th century steampunk-like device that uses the heat itself as power for the cooling process, instead of a sensor-processor-algorithm-power-fan circuit, it's directly sensor-fan, where the sensor is the power.

      If you can't see the point, well I pity you, and deman

    • Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mickwd (196449) on Sunday March 02 2008, @02:33PM (#22616832)
      "What's the point?"

      Maybe just because it's cool - in more ways than one.
  • So, the Sterling engine runs on the temperature gradient between the chip and the ambient environment. It uses this energy to...do what...increase the gradient some more? By pulling in cooler air from outside the case I guess?

    Seems like it would work best when it's needed least, and vice-versa.

    • Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)

      by maxwell demon (590494) on Sunday March 02 2008, @01:44PM (#22616560) Journal
      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.
    • I've never seen a cooling unit that did anything but exploit the temperature gradient. That's why there are fans blowing air from outside your case into it and why server rooms are kept so damn cold all the time. Since the CPU can perform well at temperatures well over room temperature, this usually works quite well.
  • It has to be hot for the fan to run, but the fan makes it cool, so.... huh? I can't seem to wrap my brain around this one.
    • anytime you use a sterling engine to harvest energy you have to be affecting the temperature on the cooler or the hotter side. Sterling engines have to have radiators for the cool side, and that in turn will heat up, causing a local increase in temperature. Large scale practical sterling engines use a source of coolness, such as running water, but there's nothing like that in a PC. I don't see this as cooling anything unless you are leading the radiator ou the back of the computer. Energy is always cons

  • But the winner is... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by whit3 (318913) on Sunday March 02 2008, @01:36PM (#22616518)
    The moving part is cute, of course, and gives a bit of visual
    tension to the apparatus you see through your peekaboo case.

    Still, it's a bit of a clunker compared to the old-tech way of
    making a no-moving-parts air pump powered by waste
    heat. I refer, of course, to the 'chimney'.

  • Are we going to get religious about the subject? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Z00L00K (682162) on Sunday March 02 2008, @01:40PM (#22616540) Homepage
    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 [wikipedia.org] was invented by Reverend Dr. Robert Stirling.

    • Peltier modules are nowhere near as efficient as sterling engines. Using a peltier module, you would be lucky to get enough power to light a small LED from the typical chipset to atmosphere temperature differential. They work fine as heat pumps since you've already got a big sink strapped to the hot side, but when you start trying to use them the other way around - to generate power from a temperature differential - their inefficiency shows through.
  • 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 necessa

    • Re:They need a rechargeable battery. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Yetihehe (971185) on Sunday March 02 2008, @02:12PM (#22616710)
      If it is idle, it is too cool to drive a fan. So fan does not cool it. If temperature raises too much, there is plenty energy for fan, so it cools the chip. What is so hard in understanding it?
      • The problem is, if it's idle, it's NOT too cool to drive a fan. Most computer's CPU fan still runs at a high enough RPM even when the CPU is idle.

        I don't think this setup can provide it if energy is not stored.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by cnettel (836611)
          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.
    • It reduces the temperature of the chip. I would call that a cooler.

      • Re:Headline misleading (Score:5, Insightful)

        by slackergod (37906) on Sunday March 02 2008, @01:48PM (#22616576) Homepage Journal
        In a physics sense, no, that's not a cooler.

        Typical "air conditioner" situation: you want to make the inside of a room cooler than the outside temperature.
        Since the room starts out similar in temp to the outside, you have to spend energy pushing heat "uphill" to
        an increasingly warmer outside. Making heat flow against the direction it would normally flow,
        that's a cooler in the thermodynamic sense.

        In the CPU situation, you want to make the inside of the cpu EQUAL to the outside temperature.
        Since the running CPU starts out way warmer than the outside temp, the heat will flow naturally on it's
        own "downhill" to the outside. Any sort of cooling system merely hastens the flow.

        In this situation, any device like a fan, etc is merely a more efficient radiator...
        as the temp of cpu gets closer to the outside, this device loses efficiency... and in no case
        could it get the cpu any _colder_ than the outside.

        Being able to do that is what makes something a "cooler" in the physics sense.

        • Re:Headline misleading (Score:5, Insightful)

          by node 3 (115640) on Sunday March 02 2008, @02:36PM (#22616858)

          In a physics sense
          I'll have to stop you right there.

          The rest of what you say is mostly true[*], but just because a term has a specific meaning in a specific context does not mean it's wrong when it has a different meaning in a different context. In both cases, the chip is cooled, making them a cooler, i.e., something that cools.

          [*] I say "mostly true" because even in an air conditioner, the heat is "flowing downhill", as it were. The difference is that is the "bottom of the hill" is being manipulated through changes in pressure (or more generally, through work)--essentially by also raising the "top of the hill". In both cases, the net temperature is being raised (in compliance with the laws of thermodynamics).

          Additionally, I wonder if you are confusing the terms "cooler" and "heat pump". Is a "cooler" something distinct from a "heat pump" in a "physics or thermodynamics" sense? I'm thinking the former is merely an informal term for the latter.

      • Re:Headline misleading (Score:5, Funny)

        by value_added (719364) on Sunday March 02 2008, @02:20PM (#22616754)
        It reduces the temperature of the chip. I would call that a cooler.

        Using a general term when a more specific one would be more appropriate and more meaningful is ... well, do I really need to spell it out? Or does referring to the common house fly as an anthropod, and your coworkers as invertebrates have any value?

        The OP was correct. They're plastic fans. No more, no less. And if Wikipedia is any indication of common or appropriate usage, a cooler [wikipedia.org] is most likely where you'll find fermented malted barley refreshments.

        Hell, while I'm at it, there's no such thing as soy milk. it's SOY JUICE! Soybeans don't have and will never have teats.

        Ok, I feel better.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by kryten_nl (863119)

      Am I right on thinking this is the first viable, potentially wide-spread use of a Sterling Engine?!
      No, read the article on wikipedia. Stirling engines are very popular when used as a cryocooler.

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