Active thermoelectric cooling

[Chavi]

Have you ever heard about or tried Thermoelectric cooling?

 

The principal rests on "Peltier effect" [an effect whereby heat is given out or absorbed when an electric current passes across a junction between two materials.]

It can be achieved by an small plate called peltier plate. You give it an current and one side will cool down and the other will heat up.

 

This cooling is used in small cooling boxes and I even seen an actual cooling for CPU`s made on this principle.

 

I have no experiences with this kind of cooling but i think it`s worth the discussion or even "I must try it" section. 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Peltier coolers have been around for a while. Even Dell tried it once with their H2C cooling system. But here's the problem with Peltier coolers:

• They eat up a lot of electricity for the performance
• They can potentially cool the area lower than ambient temperature, which can create condensation and thus, an electrical short hazard
• You need to cool off the hot side of the Peltier unit anyway with a beefy cooling system. You may as well use the beefy cooling system directly on the CPU.

So basically, it's too expensive and too risky for the performance.

[Enderman]

This was in fashion about a decade ago.

Nobody uses it anymore because

1) requires TONS of power

2) produces additional heat due to all the power consumption

3) fails easily and becomes an insulator, which makes your CPU immediately overheat

4) the hotter your CPU gets the less difference the peltier can make

5) inconvenient to set up because it still requires a whole liquid cooling setup

6) phase change performs much better

[Electronics Wizardy]

I did this on a core 2 duo.

 

TLDR not worth it

 

This is my video i made about it

 

 

With one small one(about 40-60 watts ish) Temps are a bit cooler at idle, about the same under load.