Pletiers

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Peltiers

How well do these little beasties work? And is it worth adding one to a watercooling system on the CPU for added temperature drop? If so I might be tempted to borrow one from work... :D
 
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1) its peltier ;) Or better properly known as TEC (Thermoelectric cooler)

They are basically ceramic devices that transfer current from one side to the other so one side gets hot the other gets cold.

The normal way of thinking though dude is that if you dont know what one is its not advisable to bother using them as they can easily cause death to your hardware if you dont know what your doing.

Check out the watercooling sticky in the archives for a bit of extra info. AS they say a little reading/searching goes a long way

Here is also a decent article

And if you have any less general questions post back :)
 
bah! Damn my inaccurate typing!

I know what they are, I found a shelf full of cooling stuff at work today and read up on them, I just want to know how well they work cooling a CPU, if they'd work with any of this stuff (ideally the premium... to which I can fit dual rads) and how complex it is to rig up (taking into consideration my desire to water cool my cpu and 2 7800gt's). I can get ahold of non-conductive silicon spray to waterproof and loooads of various sizes of copper blocks from work, I just don't know if any of it's worth doing or not.




errmm.. anyone know how I can change the title of this thread? *embarrassed*
 
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Wont work with anything OCUK stock you'd have to use a specialist watercooling place to get a compatable block, of which the only commercially available ones are the DD Maze 4 and the Swiftech 5002 (Swiffy is hard to get hold of)
If you have access to lots of copper then you could consider designing and making your own block which would be prefered as the maze 4 isnt a great block.

You'd then need a >226w pelt to work with a cpu and a seperate power supply to run it. Again its all covered in the Watercooling sticky.

You'd then have to insulate the block to protect from condensation.

If you want to make the effort go fer it they are fun and a rewarding way of cooling. Otherwise dont bother
 
im just about to toy with one of these myself just on my graphics card though. I think they are not the best idea on cpu as the heatload is greater than gpu.

Marv get in touch ;)
 
imo its a lot of hassle, with all the insulation and the seperate power supply, aswell as phase is a lot simpler and in some cases more effective - also looks cooler ;)

the thought of having so much extra power near the cpu doesnt make me sleep easy at night
 
TEC.jpg


TECs are the most hands on cooling you can do in my opinion and great fun if you have the patience. But they can be a lot of hassle, not only have you got water cooling to deal with, but you've also got to deal with condensation. Add in a dedicated PSU if it's a reasonable power TEC and the cost all mounts up though like any cooler you can re-use it again in the future.

Lots of potential for dead hardware though.

Jokester

Edit:- You can only have 4 lines in your sig Cyanide
 
According to AMD my CPU's only 89w, therefore a 170w peltier should be enough, which wouldn't strain the 630w maximum of my PSU even with SLI... rigging up brackets etc. for the Apogee from OCUK wouldn't be too much of a problem (I've heard it's a damned good cooler) my only concern would be the heat of the coolant which would also have to cool 2 7800gt's...

It's no hassle for me to put together mounting brackets and cooling plates etc at work, but I don't think we've got any milling equipment small enough for the kind of precision needed to make my own water block.
 
I wouldn't use a TEC loop to cool anyother components to be honest as that water is going to get a lot warmer than it would otherwise.

For PCs, TECs basically come in 3 flavours 80W (12V), 172W (24V) and 226W (12V). The 80W is a waste of time these days on high end stuff to be honest. The 226W is going to use in excess of 18A on a 12V rail and it's unlikely that you would be able to run that on the same PSU as your PC.

Jokester
 
jokester what sort of difference did you get with graphics card clocks with the pelt compared to stock cooling? What size pelt did you have? Did you volt mod the card as well?
 
According to AMD my CPU's only 89w, therefore a 170w peltier should be enough, which wouldn't strain the 630w maximum of my PSU even with SLI...

That's 89w AT STOCK. A 170w TEC is a native 24v tec, at 12v it only actually runs as a 120w TEC. Once you overclock your CPU, it's thermal output becomes hyperlinear and it's heat output rapidly grows.

Put it this way, a 226w TEC on a 3200 Clawhammer AT STOCK with voltage raised to 1.7v isn't enough to keep it below +15deg at full load with a triple rad and 50Z pump. Now consider what a 170w TEC operating as a 120w TEC would be capable of. The answer - not worth doing unless you're going all out for 226w or better.

Don't "dabble" with pelts. Do it right, or don't do it.

Apogee IS compatible with pelts (it's a 5002 series block base reworked, with flow and pins across the entire base - it'll handle pelts fine - s'only the storm that won't), but no option for coldplate clamping, therefore will be hard to achieve suitable clamping force across the TEC, and thus the apogee would be outperformed by much older designed-for-tec-use blocks.

226w on CPU with separate 12v PSU
170w on GPU, run at 120w via 12v of PC PSU
Double or triple rad
D5 or 50Z pump
Maze4-1 blocks or Swiftech MCW50-T (GPU) and MCW5002-T (CPU)
 
Mr Mister said:
jokester what sort of difference did you get with graphics card clocks with the pelt compared to stock cooling? What size pelt did you have? Did you volt mod the card as well?

My x850xtpe was at minus temps at idle amd about 5C load with a 120w tec on it.

Its on the way to dude, sorry for the delay

EDIT: Didnt see the clocks bit, i got 750 on the core but only managed 630 on the ram :(
 
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I was getting almost 700MHz (volt modded - stock is 540MHz?) on the core of a X800XTPE, I'm giving a X1900XT a go this weekend but I hear they pump out in excess of 150W so it'll be interesting to see.

Jokester
 
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