MSI will show off a new "green" motherboard concept at CeBIT. This motherboard uses a Stirling engine that uses the heat generated by the motherboard's northbridge chipset to power a fan.
The "Air Power Cooler" transfers the chipset heat into air momentum, when the air becomes hot, the air will expand then push the fan to rotate and In doing so cooling the heatsink immediately. After the air moves from the bottom to top of the piston, the air will become heavy to push the up piston down. The better air piston design can transfer over 70% heat power and transfer to air power, that's great efficiency transfer from Stirling engine theory. In a comparison with solar power the transfer rate is only around 20~30% requiring more surface and as a result cost.
MSI will present a live demo of our "Air Power Cooler" concept product in MSI's ECO area block on the MSI booth in CeBIT Hall 21 B34. You will see the electricity-less fan which was powered only by the movement of heat and air, the fan speed will change relative to the chipset temperature. The prototype "Air Power Cooler" is our first attempt to investigate how the Eco concept can work in tandem with the evolution of the mainboard "ECOlution" and joins the theme for MSI at Cebit08. We will continue to co-work with our great partners and try to turn this early concept into mass production in the near future.
MSI believe that "less is more" and currently use less power but with more efficiency. MSI philosophy for good mainboard design is not about simply adding more components to PWM phases, to then turn off some phases to make a power saving. Today MSI introduces a new ECO concept using recycled energy giving you real-world environmental and power savings! For features. MSI once again shows our market leading credentials and why our slogan is "Innovation with Style".
The guys from TweakTown uploaded a video that shows how it works:
It's a pretty cool marketing gimmick but I'm not convinced that it will save a lot of power. New chipsets from AMD, Intel or NVIDIA that use less power and don't require active or even passive cooling would be a much better solution if you really want a green PC.
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