Stirling Engine Cools Computer
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 03. 3.08
So you have your little hotplate of a CPU cooking away in your computer and have to mount a heat sink and a fan on it. Usually that is yet another power drain. Then along comes MSI with the best idea ever (other than using an efficient and cool CPU with a fanless cooler)- use the heat to run a Stirling engine that turns the fan. The hotter the chip, the faster the fan.
It is probably an idea whose time is past, as both Intel and AMD are engineering the waste heat out of their chips, and it isn`t going to work in a notebook computer. But it is still clever. ::Tweaktown via ::BoingBoing Gadgets
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And both companies have way to go, still. This is a cool (literally) device that will stay for a couple of years. Latest (and even planned) dual and quadcore CPUs still need good cooling.
Totally forgot: this is not for the CPU, this is for the northbridge chipset, the CPU socket is empty on that picture. Still nice to get rid of one fan! Well sort of :D
So this saves the energy a fan consumes: 1 or 2 Watts.
Big deal. In the meantime, on the same computer, other components consume 50 W or more.
Also, doesn't this engine have to be started manually?
It depends on the design, but many Stirling engines are self starting (some are not, but highly unlikely this would be one that doesn't self start!)
Seems more cool for no reason though.
I have seen Stirling engine fans that go on top of wood stoves to help circulate the heat around the house, and that makes sense as I wouldn't want wires in close proximity to a hot stove!
Are they using this on one of their production motherboards? I'd like to know if I could buy one, just for kicks.
I wrote a piece last year hypothesizing about this very idea. A "wouldn't it be great if..." kind of thing. I'm glad to see that someone is finally doing it.
@Jikki: The TweakTown piece said it was "a work in progress" that was "probably not far off from becoming reality" and that MSI would probably add it to an Nvidia motherboard.