Patent Application
20080159845
The present invention relates to an air fan control apparatus and particularly to a system air fans integrated control apparatus to detect a plurality of heat sources and integrate a plurality of system air fans to dissipate heat synchronously to effectively reduce accumulating heat in a system environment.
With the advance of precision technology the size of electronic devices such as personal computers shrinks gradually but performance increases constantly. Heat dissipating of the electronic devices become a serious problem. R.O.C. patent publication No. 200619900 discloses a temperature sensitive radiator that has a temperature detection circuit containing a thermal sensitive resistor or other temperature sensitive elements to constantly detect temperature alterations of the heat source of an electronic device during operation. In the event that the temperature of the heat source exceeds a preset temperature level a signal is issued to a driving circuit to increase the rotation speed of the radiator to increase the heat dissipating effect.
However the approach mentioned above can no longer meet the requirements of the present electronic devices. For instance a generally personal computer has many heat sources, such as power supply, CPU, hard disk drives, display cards and chassis and the like. A plurality of air fans have to be installed corresponding to the heat sources to reduce the temperature thereof. In the conventional air fan control architecture when a higher temperature of one heat source is detected the rotation speed of one air fan is regulated through the driving power. But temperature increase of one heat source often causes a higher temperature in the entire system environment due to thermal convection. The conventional air fan design does not take into account of the adverse effect caused by the accumulating heat of the environment. Each air fan is responsible for heat dissipating of a single heat source. The rotation speeds of the air fans in the system are not controlled integrally (for instance the rotation speed of the air fan for the chassis also has to be increased to dissipate the heated air outside the chassis). As a result, thermal convection tends to make the temperature of the entire system higher and total heat dissipating efficiency is affected. The problem of the accumulating heat in the environment remains unresolved.
The primary object of the present invention is to provide a system air fans integrated control apparatus that can concurrently detect a plurality of heat sources and integrate a plurality of air fans in the system to perform heat dissipating simultaneously to effectively reduce the heat accumulating problem in the system environment.
To achieve the foregoing object, a preferred embodiment of the invention includes a plurality of detection units to detect a plurality of heat sources and output a plurality of temperature alteration parameter signals, a signal integration and determination circuit to receive and interpret the temperature alteration parameter signals to determine a rotation speed regulation signal, and an air fan driving circuit connecting to the signal integration and determination circuit and an external driving power source. Upon receiving the rotation speed regulation signal the driving power of the external driving power source to the air fans is synchronously adjusted. Thereby multiple heat sources can be detected at the same time and multiple air fans of the system can be integrated to synchronously dissipate heat.
The foregoing, as well as additional objects, features and advantages of the invention will be more readily apparent from the following detailed description, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings.
Please refer to
a plurality of detection units 2 which are thermal resistors installed on the heat sources 11-15 to perform detection and output a plurality of temperature alteration parameter signals 3;
a signal integration and determination circuit 4 which may be a micro-control unit (MCU) linking to the detection units 2 to receive the temperature alteration parameter signals 3. It has a signal integration means to interpret the temperature alteration parameter signals 3 and determine a rotation speed regulation signal 5. The rotation speed regulation signal 5 is formed by taking the maximum parameter value of the temperature alteration parameter signals 3, or by taking the average value of the temperature alteration parameter signals 3; and
an air fan driving circuit 6 which is connected to the signal integration and determination circuit 4 and an external power source 7 to receive the rotation speed regulation signal 5 to synchronously regulate driving power 8 of the external power source 7 to the air fans 21-25.
Referring to
Implementation of the system air fans integrated control apparatus 1 is not limited to the external controller as shown in
In short, the system air fans integrated control apparatus 1 of the invention can detect multiple heat sources 11-15 and synchronously regulate the driving power 8 of the external power source 7 to multiple air fans 21-25 so that the air fans 21-25 are integrally controlled to perform heat dissipating synchronously. Thus the accumulating heat of the system environment can be reduced more effectively.
While the preferred embodiments of the invention have been set forth for the purpose of disclosure, modifications of the disclosed embodiments of the invention as well as other embodiments thereof may occur to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, the appended claims are intended to cover all embodiments which do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention.
