cooling Exotic Thermoelectric Cooling

[Daymin]

Hello!

 

I recently saw a video on Youtube about a Thermoelectric generator and I immediately  that these thermoelectric-units would be an interesting way to cool your processors.

 

I'm just sharing my thought here because some may be interested or want to try it themselves.

 

I did my research and found out that, of course, I'm not the first one with this kind of idea, 

but all the builds that I found were kind of to unprofessional or to unrealistic with modern expensive computer hardware.

 

For the people who want it short there are images of my planes attached and here is also a link to the realtimeboard page, they are pretty self-explanatory.

 

 

For the people who want to know bit more about what I'm thinking:

 

These Thermoelectric-units are basically heat-pumps, which when you apply power heat up one side and cool the other one. 

They are pretty cheap (2$-20$/unit) but the more you are willing to pay the better the efficiency of the units will be.

 

The danger of these Thermoelectric-units are that they create extreme temperatures.

That means you can either fry your processor because of the heat or short out your motherboard because of condensation if you are not careful enough.

 

I've seen people use Vaseline to secure their motherboard from the condensation water and use massive heatsinks to cool the unit,

but I think that's not save enough if you consider the prices of some CPU's.

 

So I've thought that it would be the best to move the Thermoelectric-unit away from the CPU, so the unit doesn't cool the CPU but the water which cools the CPU.

Because it's hard for me to explain my detailed thoughts in a non-native language I've made the pictures below to explain it.

 

Such a build would of course be highly inefficient and quite some effort to properly build but I thought I nevertheless share my concept.

In addition if you don't want it to cool your CPU you could use it as a generator to charge devices.

I might be building a cheap prototype for myself in the near future, which I will then share.

 

Greetings, 
Markus.

 

[porina]

Problem is they take a TON of power to move much heat. I think the rule of thumb is they must be rated at least as much as whatever you're cooling. And here is the problem... you then have to get rid of the heat generated by both it and your original device. It can work, just horribly inefficient.

[Daymin]

I'm still writing the article but you are definitely right.

The biggest issue of such a build would be the inefficiency but I think some people don't care about a higher mains-bill if they have something special to show off.

[Cela1]

The thing with Thermo-Electric Generators is that they only have a small cooling capacity / or a small electicity yield. Somebody has made a harvesting circuit to charge their phone with heat from a passive cooling PC case, I think you can find it on youtube.

[Moress]

Would be cool to hook this up as a part of a case. Have its gimmick be that you can charge your phone from the heat generated from your CPU.
As an actual cooling solution, no.

[Daymin]

7 minutes ago, Cela1 said:

The thing with Thermo-Electric Generators is that they only have a small cooling capacity / or a small electicity yield. Somebody has made a harvesting circuit to charge their phone with heat from a passive cooling PC case, I think you can find it on youtube.

These TEC-Units can create a delta Temperature maximum of up to 70 degrees Celsius which I think would be powerful enough to cool a CPU.

But your point is valid and I thought it is just an interesting idea.

[Cela1]

Just now, Daymin said:

These TEC-Units can create a delta Temperature maximum of up to 70 degrees Celsius which I think would be powerful enough to cool a CPU.

But your point is valid and I thought it is just an interesting idea.

GL

[Daymin]

7 minutes ago, Thread212 said:

I've heard about that before.
its called peltier or some sort.
its pretty useful for overclocker, but its because it so cold and if your cpu temp is lower than your ambient it can create a condensation..
and short circuit your mobo.

Because of the condensation I thought to move the peltier units away from the cpu and cool the water cooling the cpu and not the cpu directly 

[Daymin]

Just now, Thread212 said:

u can apply a non conductivity gel in ur mobo.. near the cpu socket to prevent the water from short circuited ur cpu or ur mobo..

I thought about that but I think it looks shitty to have your mobo full of slimy stuff.

[Daymin]

Just now, Thread212 said:

well yeah.. hahah..
so its up to you. though water cooler is more than enough for cooling your cpu under heavy load.

I know that it would be overkill ^^ 

It's more of an experiment because I'm bored (:

[TKmebrah]

I have thought about this too. I had a similar idea to you, you cool the water in your system with it and you can mount an air cooler on the TEC. Not sure how well it would work, but I think I might try it with another PC i have laying around. Seems like a cool experiment.

[W-L]

3 hours ago, Daymin said:

-SNIP-

It's doable and I've seen it done before on the forums as a proof of concept, you will want to keep the loop with the peliter above ambient to not have to deal with condensation. Just note you will want close to double the wattage of the peliter unit to the heat output of the loop to have effective cooling. 

 

[Daymin]

1 hour ago, TKmebrah said:

I have thought about this too. I had a similar idea to you, you cool the water in your system with it and you can mount an air cooler on the TEC. Not sure how well it would work, but I think I might try it with another PC i have laying around. Seems like a cool experiment.

I was just looting old unused computers in my house for heatsinks, fans and power supplys and found all the remaining stuff for 50€ on ebay.
So I might give it a try, but nevertheless it will take some time because all the stuff has to ship from china.

[Daymin]

5 minutes ago, W-L said:

It's doable and I've seen it done before on the forums as a proof of concept, you will want to keep the loop with the peliter above ambient to not have to deal with condensation. Just note you will want close to double the wattage of the peliter unit to the heat output of the loop to have effective cooling. 

 

Thats pretty close to what I wanted to build, which gives me confidence.

But I don't want to permanently  cool my CPU with it, I just want to test it.

[W-L]

4 minutes ago, Daymin said:

Thats pretty close to what I wanted to build, which gives me confidence.

But I don't want to permanently  cool my CPU with it, I just want to test it.

One good thing to do is to run the peliter on another PSU though as those things can get very power hungry, and to have multiple smaller peliters over one large one as it will give more surface area ifor cooling and ehating. 

[Daymin]

2 minutes ago, W-L said:

One good thing to do is to run the peliter on another PSU though as those things can get very power hungry, and to have multiple smaller peliters over one large one as it will give more surface area ifor cooling and ehating. 

I have a 230W and a 320W PSU planned to use with the peliters, one peliter needs about 60W so I can choose how many of them I want to use and adapt the PSU.

I found a 40x80mm,  40x120mm, 40x160mm and a 40x200mm Waterblock which lets me choose how many peliters I want to use.

 

Thanks for the helpful input btw