Fujitsu Siemens Computers this week launched a new server aimed at small businesses and branch offices, which it claims is the most energy efficient tower server on the market.

The company said that the new Primergy TX120 consumes 40 percent less power than Fujitsu's previous tower servers and rival models on the market, despite using standard Xeon processors.

"It is easy to cut power use if you cut down the processor speed, but our aim was to deliver reductions at the same performance levels, so the energy savings have been achieved through design innovations," explained Joe Duran, product manager for servers at Fujitsu.

These include an improved power supply unit and smarter cooling technologies, such as a new chassis design that aims to optimise air flow and a liquid filled "heat pipe" that efficiently dissipates heat away from the processors and towards the fans. New fan design also cuts noise from the servers by half compared to standard models.

The server is a third of the size of standard tower servers, which according to Duran ensures that fewer raw materials are used in its manufacture and results in less waste.

Tower servers are typically used in small businesses and branch offices and Duran admitted it was unclear how the product's energy consumption would compare with blade servers deployed in an optimised datacentre. "It is very hard to achieve a direct comparison [between the energy efficiency of blades and tower servers] as you have lots of blades drawing energy from one source and they operate in different environments," he said. "But we'd argue that for small businesses or branch offices that want their own server for fail over or other purposes the Primergy outperforms other stand alone servers."