[DavidJa]

Actively cooled heatsinks aren’t exactly new, but electricity is so last year - what about powering those fans by the heat generated from the chip it’s trying to cool?

Well MSI has done exactly that with its new ECOlution heatsink – it features a "Stirling Engine" - an engineering masterpiece originally patented by Scottish engineer, Robert Sterling. It features a four process system that moves gas back and forth between hot and cold heat exchangers: the chipset and the fins, respectively.

[Adragontattoo]

No thanks, I prefer to choose.

[Sam__]

very nice...doubt id use it but looks like it has some potential.

[EmAn]

That is a very ingenious idea but I am not sure how well it would actually work...

Needs some benches!

[Oroka Sempai]

I think this would have potential for low wattage CPUs that barely needs a cooling fan. With no motor, there should be minimal noise from this set-up. What could be done is create a heat pipe system that covers all the main heat generators, and power a decent sterling fan to cool everything.

Imagine, an old technology to solve a modern high tech issue!

[aja]

How much electricity can you possibly save?

[freakdiablo]

Originally Posted by aja

How much electricity can you possibly save?

Im guessing a fraction of a watt, but when you run that over several years, then it may have an impact.

With the amount of airflow that thing probably puts out Im wondering if it would make any difference then just running the heatink all the way across.

[Adragontattoo]

Originally Posted by freakdiablo

Im guessing a fraction of a watt, but when you run that over several years, then it may have an impact.

With the amount of airflow that thing probably puts out Im wondering if it would make any difference then just running the heatink all the way across.

Or for that matter, having it connected or venting outside of the case.

I.E. "Top" of case has slits to allow heatsink to pass through and the heat is exhausted via outside airflow.

[B-auto]

Cool. Is it going to be put into production, or just a test-bed?

[Shiggity]

For a second I thought it was going to have solar panels.

[z0n3]

When the chipset reaches 60 C?
Um.... Never had that happen before and my chipsets are all using $15 passive coolers.

[nd4spdbh2]

lol IKIKUINTHENUTZ linked me to this bout a week ago... i just started laughfin... i mean cmon a standard pc fan that size uses MAYBE 150ma @ 12v which is 1.8W/hr extrapolate that over a year thats only 15768Watts saved... u could save more power by unpluggin your unused cellphone charger from the wall or any other wall wart that is not in use.

its an ingenious design but it probably takes A LOT more energy to produce than what it actually saves.... *cough* sounds like flex fule (e85) *cough*


ya and 60*C is WAY WAY to much heat...

[netmask]

That's true 60*C is way too much. tho I like the idea of infinite self-replenished energy.

[B-auto]

Originally Posted by nd4spdbh2

its an ingenious design but it probably takes A LOT more energy to produce than what it actually saves.... *cough* sounds like flex fule (e85) *cough*

Completely o/t - but the benefits of e85 on a vehicle that needs 100oct+ are nothing short of amazing. Sure the amount of fuel being burned goes up, but I can buy it for $2.50 a gallon vs $20.00 a gallon for VP C16.

[aja]

Rather go back to the days of a single fan case whereby the fan draws air through the PSU and through everything else also

[vt420]

stirling cycle stuff is neat, but this seems more like a gadget than really usefull.


Jeff

[nd4spdbh2]

Originally Posted by B-auto

Completely o/t - but the benefits of e85 on a vehicle that needs 100oct+ are nothing short of amazing. Sure the amount of fuel being burned goes up, but I can buy it for $2.50 a gallon vs $20.00 a gallon for VP C16.

... when 95% of the population uses regular unleaded.... e85 takes 40% more volume to create the same horsepower (granted it does have a higher octane) and to make 1.17gallons of e85 it takes 1 gallon of normal fosile fuel... it makes no sence why the hell we continue to try to use this fuel... oh and cant forget the fact theres only about 700-800 flex fuel stations across the usa... and 1 in canada. what we need to start using is diesel, as you can get more torque more power better gasmilage and a longer lasting motor thats SO much cleaner burning... the rest of the friggin world uses diesel... but this is just my take on it ... sorry for being completly off topic.

as for sterling engins i have always thought they were friggin super cool you tube "sterling engine"

[Niku-Sama]

i think the theroy is introduce it, refine it for other applications, ammount of power saved over a lite time that every one generally uses a fan gets something replaced with something like this.

you cant think about it as just you, think about it as world wide.
if 4 billion people had one of these fans, according to some ones estimate of watts saved per person, there would be about 6307200000000000watts saved of those 4 billion, unless i missed a decimal point in which i probally did because its almost 5am

[Kuroimaho]

As I recall 2 weeks ago was a nanotechnology demo in tokyo where Toshiba introduced similar cpufans.

[FlailBoy]

I do have doubts that setup could really generate a lot of airflow. I do find the stirling engine to be pretty fascinating, though. That design looks to be pretty well conceived, so I'm guessing it wouldn't need much of a temp differential to operate.

I'd agree with others here that a low-power setup using passive sinks and one or more of these as case fans might be a better application.