MSI just opened a new and interesting road in the cooling field, by releasing the first mainboard with a cooler using the Stirling engine theory. Now, is that great or what? It won't help you save energy costs, it won't cool your components much better but, thinking big, it may be yet another interesting step towards a cleaner planet!


The idea is pretty simple - the "Air Power Cooler" from MSI uses the hot air to push the fan to rotate, and so cool the heatsink attached. The small piston that powers the fan is in direct contact with the heat generator (chipset for now, but maybe it could be used for CPUs too, in the future), so when the air expands, it moves the fan, it's just as easy as that!

A live demo of the "Air Power Cooler" concept will be ready for the public at MSI's booth in CeBIT Hall 21 B34, but don't think about the fact this is a prototype. One day, it may become reality, adding a bit more "green" to the idea of "green computing"!

 

Keeping the cool temperature for CPU overclockers is an important thing and thus such procedures require good cooling systems. There are various systems on the hardware market, some more expensive than others, some based on water, some based on freon. ASUS is a well known PC hardware manufacturer, with a good reputation among PC enthusiasts. Here's a solution that does not require water or freon, is quite acceptable as price (around $55): the ASUS Arctic Square Cooler. This cooler works with both AMD and Intel CPUs, and the compatibility list is the following: AMD Sempron, AMD Athlon 64 X2 series, AMD Athlon FX, Intel Pentium 4 HT, Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Extreme, Intel Core 2 Quad. The basic idea behind this CPU cooler is to offer great thermal environment for the processor without making irritating and noticeable noise. However, if you plan to buy it and install it on your CPU, you need to take out the motherboard from the computer case in order to mount the back-plate. After the plate and the cooler have been properly mounted, the motherboard is to be placed carefully back into the case - the next step is to check the new temperatures of the CPU both in idle mode and during intensive processing. According to various testers, this cooler should reduce the heat with about 20 Celsius degrees extra than the average standard coolers.

Extreme gamers who like to overclock their RAM memory modules will be happy to find out that Zaward company has created a special type of cooler for PC memory. The RAM Cooler is capable of reducing the temperature of up to 15 Celsius degrees, if compared to a memory without any cooling system. The Zaward cooler is compatible with the SDRAM, DDR, DDR2, DDR3 memory type (single or double sided), and has two small fans (30mm) hiddent between the metal blades.