I'm currently working on my Superman project thats going to incorperate a modified
dorm fridge for a chiller to cool the wc liquid directly (make a reservior outa the evaporator )
I was digging through my crap and came accross an old automitive 12v cooler.
I tore it apart and got the pelt out, the specs for the cooler as bought are 12v 4a
thats including the 12v 0.18a fan.
This thing also had a htr for keeping hot foods but the specs
don't give any detail for the amp draw between cooling or heating, so I'll assume in heating mode it would draw more amps.
My question is at 12 volts drawing 4 amps what wattage would that be?
I got an ohm's law thing here but forget the I...E.. W thing (don't need it much)
my second question is would this be a worth while size pelt to try and use?
I don't overclock (yet) the only purpose is....well cause I can. and I'm also planning on some kind of future
system upgrade prolly cpu and ram, maybe mobo aswell.
The cpu was already stressed beyond it's breaking point last week, I screwed up installing the wc block and mbm 5 showed 197 F by the time I pulled the plug. So cpu will definitly be replaced.
Hmmm I'm ramblin on again (sorry)
opinions?

Well, I've certainly dabbled my fair share in TEC cooling solutions. But a 4A pelt is not going to do much. A good pelt for serious sub-ambient cooling will take at least 24A @ 12-16V. I don't think that pelt will be worth the effort you would otherwise spend on installing it and insulating everything (assuming that it could even get to sub-ambient temps).

btw- Ohm's law: V = I x R, where V is volts, I is Amps, and R is resistance in Ohms.

Get the 246W or what ever from frozen cpu or if you have money, get the 446W or so, but you need a BIG PSU.

Didnt you say you work on refrigerators or something? Instead of using a pelt, get a refrige system and mount the cold side on the CPU.

And thats a 48W Pelt. Its not going to cool much.

Hey Nerdz, notice that there's been a lot of people asking about pelts lately? Just thought I'd state the obvious...

Yea Probably because its Winter Time....

what kind of bad things can happen with these things?

oh... condensation for starters... which leads to short circuts and fried hardware, that's a nut twister. If you don't properly cool the pelt, it can burn out and you can fry your proc. You can overload your PSU if you try to run a pelt of you system's main PSU. Blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda.

Thermoelectric Cooling is definitely not for the faint of heart. If you're new at it and looking into doing it, you should really do your homework on it and possibly get the help of people that have done it. You can seriously mess some stuff up if you don't know what you're doing.

Quote: Originally Posted by fhsfiremanco1 what kind of bad things can happen with these things?

well you could burn down your house with it, or anything in between

well It was a thought.
I'm going to "dabble" with a chiller system first.
Then I'dd design and build a so called "phase change" system.
To me it's nothing more than an overpriced refrigerator for your cpu.

So I can understand the hoopla about these things.
If you overclock, do you NEED to get below the manufacturers recommended temps on your cpu?
does the cpu get faster the colder you go or is it just about achieving really cold temperatures?
amd says 140F is high end temps. I'm running 75F right now and the room is 80f.


Lets say I make a cpu cooling refrigeration system that WILL keep your cpu temp. at 50F no matter what you overclock it to. Is that good enough or does the colder temps help?

my basic question is I'm using an MSI KM4M MS-6734 mobo with an AMD XP 2600+ cpu at 1.92 Ghz
no OC and my temps are between 50F and 90F. does the colder cpu temp do anything for performance?
Please explain the need or desire for colder cpu temps. Is it bragging rights? OR does the colder temp help?

There was a rule of thumb somewhere I read that said something like for every 10C below ambient you run a chip you gain 2-5% overclockability or something like that. Running a proc below ambient temps will definitely help an overclock but it's not like you can't overclock something without phase change or a TEC.

My advice is build your system up with the stock heat sink or the best one you have handy, but don't invest any more money on cooling just yet. Second step is to start out small then push the limits of your overclock. See what works and how your temps look. A good example are modern AMDs, they tend to run cool and don't generally require exotic cooling to see some really good overclocks. However if you intend on pushing the P4 to 5ghz you might want to keep a close eye on temps. If you see your temps pushing 70C you might want to consider going with high end air or even water. A kit might suit your needs but if you think you need more cooling you might want to build your own 1/2" ID triple 120mm radiator setup or pelt or whatever.

Then on top of all that is just do it for the fun of it. No one cares if you break any records or not. We can't all be Cap'n Planet

Good luck,
Jeff/vmspionage