Intelligent cooling fan device and fan rotation speed controlling method thereof

Abstract

A fan cooling device and a method of controlling a fan rotation speed are provided. The fan cooling device includes a thermo sensor, a thermo monitor unit, a processing unit, a driving unit, and a fan. The thermo monitor unit compares the sensed result from the thermo sensor with at least one threshold, and decides whether or not to send an interrupt event according to the compared result. The processing unit executes an interrupt service according to the interrupt event, and then sets and outputs a value of the fan rotation speed. The driving unit drives the fan and controls the rotation speed of the fan according to the value of the fan rotation speed. The fan sends out a wind flow to reduce the internal temperature of a computer system or a CPU.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application claims the priority benefit of Taiwan application serial no. 96147648, filed on Dec. 13, 2007. The entirety of the above-mentioned patent application is hereby incorporated by reference herein and made a part of this specification.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0002]1. Field of the Invention[0003]The present invention generally relates to a temperature control device and a method thereof, and more particularly, to a cooling fan device and a method of controlling a fan rotation speed.[0004]2. Description of Related Art[0005]With the rapid development of technology, computer hardware has been developed rapidly in recent years, for example, central processing units (CPUs) commonly used by hardware devices such as desktop computers, laptop computers, and even servers and workstations. The clock speed of the CPUs becomes increasingly high, so as to cater to the mass's requirements on processing an increasingly large amount of data...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0007]Accordingly, the present invention is directed to a fan cooling device, which does not require additional circuit elements and software for performing complicated mathematical operations, and has lower design cost and element cost.

[0008]The present invention is also directed to a method of controlling a fan rotation speed, which does not use software programs to detect temperature in a polling mode through BIOS. Thus, the performance of the fan can be effectively increased, and the power consumption is effectively reduced.

[0010]The present invention also provides a method of controlling a fan rotation speed, which includes the following steps. First, an operating temperature is sensed to obtain a sensed result. Next, the sensed result is compared with at least one threshold to obtain a compared result. Next, whether or not to send an interrupt event is decided according to the compared result. Next, an interrupt service is executed according to the interrupt event so as to set a value of the fan rotating speed. Next, the fan driven and the rotation speed of the fan are controlled according to the value of the fan rotation speed so as to provide a wind flow to reduce the operating temperature.

[0013]To sum up, the present invention can achieve the above function simply by using the interrupt event, and the interrupt service of BIOS or driver, and through looking up the table. Thus, not only the program architecture required by the software is greatly simplified, but also the performance of the fan is also effectively improved.

Problems solved by technology

If no cooling device is installed, the system crash may occur, or even the hardware devices may be damaged.

However, in actual usage, the extreme environments set by the manufacturer seldom encounters.

In this case, the fan rotating at a very high speed does no good to the CPU, but generates noise, which may adversely affect the hardware device and causes problems to the user.

Moreover, this design consumes much electric power, so the performance of the fan in cooling the CPU is rather poor.

However, as the BIOS controls the fan rotation speed through a segmented variable speed controlling mode, when the program is converted, the rising temperature of the CPU generates even more noise due to the higher acceleration of the fan.

Therefore, this design still has its own disadvantages.

Thus, circuit elements and software for performing the mathematical operations must be additionally installed, so the design cost and element cost are increased accordingly.

Moreover, the manner of adjusting the fan rotating speed through using the software program to detect the temperature in a polling mode through the BIOS has a rather poor performance, and consumes excessive large power.

Images