Peltier Plates ???

[Elldallan]

O.K

want to throw this out there, friend of mine is building his own pc dont know exact specs but pretty good. Question he wants me to ask is about peltier plates for cooloing his cpu ??? possible ? if so anyone know any dissadvantages sucjh as condensation or the dissapation of heat from the heatsink.............. well hoping someone can give some advice on this subject I can pass on .
Thanks Ell

 

[agent86]

In my opinion (and I'm sure there are h4rdc0r3 gamers who will disagree) air cooling is sufficient for any normal computing task, including gaming. The money/effort you would lay out to water cool (or whatever other crazy cooling method) your rig isn't worth the hassle or the cash.

 

[Elldallan]

fair and reasonable comment, but I am talking about someone who once he has heard or seen something he just has to try it money does not concern this guy if it is something new that may help and especially if noone else has lol

 

[xKodiakx]

Well if he's that determined then go for it... Peltiers aren't plates... they are like out of small A/Cs and things, kind of like a compressor or whatever....

but with Pelts, Thermo Electric, N2O or any of those... Condensation is the most dangerous aspect...

I mean you have to seriously seal the socket off completely and have crazy insulation around the socket/processor/and anything that drops the temps below ambient.


to get an idea of it check out this post:
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=760051

 

[agent86]

fair and reasonable comment, but I am talking about someone who once he has heard or seen something he just has to try it money does not concern this guy if it is something new that may help and especially if noone else has lol

I'll tell you what - have this guy send me the money he would spend on it and I GUARANTEE* that I will improve his FPS in whatever game the same amount as a peltier plate or whatever.

(*50% money back guarantee, 15% restocking fee, guarantee void where prohibited or permitted by law)

 

[Elldallan]

LOL he wants good fps but also the coolest machine running he can get, just cant please somepeople lol

 

[agent86]

Sigh. Seriously, when will people stop wasting money on stupid numbers! Argh... Let me try to explain this in simple terms...

The way peltier plates work is by cooling one plate at the expense of heating the other. The advantage is that you can cool lower than the temperature of the room you're in. The disadvantages are:

- You still have to deal with the heat. You'll need a heatsink and a watercooling system to deal with the 'hot' plate.
- This consumes lots of power. (~100s of Watts) Like, maybe need to get an insanely powerful PSU or a second PSU just for the cooler. Big bucks in terms of hardware and power cost.
- The failure mode is awful. Unlike a fan, if hooked up improperly or if something fails, you are far more likely to fry your CPU. If you hook it up backwards, you'll cool the water at the expense of heating the CPU. Can you say fried chip?
- By cooling below ambient, you run into trouble with condensation (as Kodiak mentioned) Water + electronics = Bzzzt.

You can read the technical details of all of this at:
http://www.heatsink-guide.com/peltierinfo.shtml

To summarize... On a price/performance scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is "Free state of the art gaming rig!" and 1 is "$5000 for a Monster Cable upgrade" this ranks around 2. Invest the money somewhere else, don't waste it on expensive, ineffective cooling methods...