hey i was lookin thru the swiftech site and i noticed that they have a thermo electric cooling system. it seems to be far superior to conventional water cooling. can anybody tell me how this works or how much more effective it is.

Thermoelectric coolers (aka peltiers) work when electrical current flows through two dissimilar conductors, heat transfer will occur from one conductor to the other.



Im not the watercooling expret arround here(see putwig or lcpiper) But i know peltiers require a tremedious amount of power to run,

Quote: 226 Watts Thermoelectric module

and there is also the worry of cendenstion at lower tempratures and condesation+CPU= bad.

But that Swiftech pertier solution looks like a pretty good system, if you can afford it and teh power constaints.

This is the one your refering too right?

Ohh Ya!! And welcome to Pimprig dude!!

haha thanks. ive already got my case pimped out with a window i cut myself. just waiting to borrow a friends digi cam so i can take some pix. thx for the info

Elusiv003, if Goat has satisfied your curiosity on Peltiers then cool. They can be fun to play with.

But if you really start thinking about getting one, please yell at Putwig, Goat, ViperZ, or myself. There are others here that can help also, these are just a few.

Peltier cooling has a lot of requirements and if you don't do it right, you will be spending a lot of cash just so you can "F"-up your rig and then you'll spend some more.

Choos o' newbie Hoe brother. Welcome to PR.

Does it work any better then watercooling? Like has anyone compared to 2?

It is far superior to water cooling, but also far more complicated, and far more risky!

Most peltiers users require water to cool the pelt, this air cooled pelt from swiftech is an oddity, and I suspect a pretty low wattage peltier.

Water cooling is "limited" by ambient temps. Because room air is being used to cool the radiator, you cannot cool below room temperature.

This is great, in that, as long as you stay at or above room temp there is no risk of condensation forming on the outside of your block and tubing. But it does limit your cooling potential.

Phase change and peltier systems are able to cool way blow ambient temps (how does -15 C at full load sound?) but now condensation is a major concern.

The mobo, socket, water block, and tubing must all be insulated. The socket and processor pins must be water proofed.

All in all they are a big hassel! I am just not an avid enough overclocker to warrant the risk and effort required to cool below ambient!

I have also never used liquid nitrogen on a test bench........and have never even seen hydroflouroether.

Yea see, with the way a TEC, (peltier), works the peltier itself creates as much or more heat then the CPU that it's cooling.

If you can't find a way to get rid of all that heat, then it will burn up. Once the TEC burns, or fails, then it will actually thermally insilate the CPU and that guy will burn up fast.

Lets say you have a CPU that is running at 100watts.
Then you need about 20% overhead on the TEC, so 120watt TEC minnimum.
Thats 12Volts X 10amps. That's a dedicated PSU just to power the TEC.
Now you have a total heat load of 220watts worth of power to cool.
At this point, you usually have to use water cooling on top of the TEC to cool it.

That Swiftech has a 226watt peltier on it. I know, I was surprised when I saw that.
But it isn't going to run at 226watts because they only intend for you to run it at about 120watts or less.

Anyway, they are an option, they can cool better then straight water, but you usually have to run water to cool the TEC anyway so it's still big money. A combo TEC/Water cooling solution done right is a good $500 setup.

But everyone spends their money on what they want so if you need help, call

Try http://coolchips.com/ for a good maker of peltier devices.
"Thats 12Volts X 10amps. That's a dedicated PSU just to power the TEC.
Now you have a total heat load of 220watts worth of power to cool.
At this point, you usually have to use water cooling on top of the TEC to cool it.
"
An enermax EG651P-VE FMA might handle both the coolchip and the rest of the system without a hitch.
Use a BIG heatsink and huge fans that vent to the outside of the case.
You can mask the noise by playing music and turning up the volume.
BTW I have a 50x CD-ROM drive that is as loud as hell(the disc must spin at 25000rpm!).

OK, Yes, it would do it, but not with much room left over, the EG651P-VE FMA produces up to 36A on the +12Volt rail.

Here are the specs on a 226watt pelt like Swiftech sells;

Maximum operating temp: 125 C
Imax = 24 Amps
Qmax = 226.1 Watts
Vmax = 15.2 Volts
Delta Tmax = >67 (C)
Size = 50mm X 50mm X 3.10mm

This means that a 12Volt PSU is fine, but this TEC can only deal with 24 Amps max.

Now there is one small detail about Peltiers that a lot of guys miss.

The rated wattage is for the entire surface area of the TEC.

That means that if you have this guy fully powered at 226watts and the core of your CPU is 1/8th of the area of the TEC, then you get 1/8th of the cooling capability. That would be about 28.25watts. That is why the MCX-462+T only performs like the chart below.



The best it does is around 42C against chips that put out 50-80 watts.

It will do the job, but think about it, condensation, expense, and a ton of extra heat being dumped right into your case making the job even tougher because unless your ducted, you still have to use the case temp air to cool the heatsink.

And the Coolchips are still in development and have been for well over a year that I know of.

That Enermax PSU is $176 from newegg.com
This one from Be-Cooling produces 25A at 12Volts, ( 1 amp over the max the pelt can take), and is $79 and will let you keep your existing PSU for everything else.



This is why it would work a whole lot better on a P4 which has that heatspreader that gives the core so much more surface area for cooling.

These are my thoughts on it.

That's why I used a copper cold block and a copper shim when I was running my pelt. It spread the cooling out a bit more. Granted, the small center is the only area that received any benefit, but it allowed the pelt to operate more efficiently.

Yup ol' buddy, even more important is that a Pelt is sorta like porcellan(SP) material and can easily be crushed. The cold plate keeps even pressure on the entire surface so that you can mount you water block or HS without the core punching through it

wow i didnt expect this much of a response. great community. thanks for the info. i think this is a little too extreme for me.