One of the main problems that the PC as a concept faces from its beginnings and that extends to the present day is that of efficiency. The PC as a whole is a machine that wastes meaningless energy, but would it be possible to use part of that energy so that, through heat, better efficiency could be achieved? Could we use the heat generated for more than just dissipate it? The answer is complicated, but could have a solution thanks to the Stirling engine .
Power supplies are possibly the component that achieves the most efficiency in our PC, especially if it is of high quality or is a TOP model. And there are sources that only convert the energy used into heat with figures as small as 6%, so 94% is correctly used for various power purposes.
A graphics card, a CPU, motherboard or even an HDD generate a very high amount of heat that escapes and cannot be transformed into any benefit for the PC itself, but there is a system that is capable of improving this and that Continuing to innovate could change the industry forever.
The Stirling Engine Theory
Although it has its theory section as such, this type of engine is fully functional and has a series of very clear advantages that we could implement on a PC. The theoretical part tells us that this type of engine is the only one that is capable, or should be able, to achieve maximum performance for a thermal engine.
It is the typical one that uses compression and expansion to function and has some very specific characteristics that are really interesting: it allows energy in the form of heat to be converted into fully mechanical energy through four key processes such as cooling, compression, heating and expansion.
This means that we can use heat to move a mechanical object. Its operation is simple: we need to compress air in a fixed amount and by means of which said air will circulate between two regions with different temperatures. Keep in mind that there is not a single type of Stirling engine , but on the contrary, there are many types, allowing a miniature adaptation to our PC, but is it possible? What could we achieve with this type of engine?
Wide sources of heat, many possibilities
Undoubtedly, it would be necessary to invest a huge amount of money, but knowing the efficiency of this engine, it would only be necessary to design a type of piston that is capable of transferring at least 70% of the heat as mechanical energy with great speed.
This would allow said piston and by means of a more or less complex system of pulleys to move a fan at certain RPM efficient enough to cool a heatsink connected to the base of said motor with heat pipes.
That is to say, we would have a system based on the same finned heat pipes and a fan , where the only difference would be the implementation of the Stirling motor that would be in charge of moving the fan and not using the PSU’s energy with it.
This would be applicable and more efficient the more heat the components generate, such as the CPU and especially the GPUs. So why not use it? The answer is also very simple: cost. It is much more expensive to research this system and then implement a heatsink like the one mentioned for each model of CPU or GPU , while we only save just 2 amps of current for your fans.
And it is that this system does not improve the temperature of the chip, it simply uses the heat to move a fan or several in the best case and thus cool the heatsink. Therefore, and although there was a prototype available, the idea was practically completely discarded when the heat pipes broke, since they were much cheaper and simpler to manufacture, where they also kept temperatures at bay.