Has anyone tried to build their own peltier coolers?

[killingfield1975]

do you just sandwich one of these guys between your cpu and heatsink?

http://www.melcor.com/ptseries.html

[synaps3]

You could, but the pelt can break if your heatsink isn't large enough to dissipate the heat.

Think of a peltier as a "heat pump." It takes all the thermal energy from one side and puts it out the other. If the cold side gets too cold, or the hot side gets too hot, the peltier can fail and die.

I would not recommend using a peltier without looking into it a lot beforehand, you run a lot of risks when using one (thermal failure, condensation, damage to PSU, etc).

They do make a relatively cheap watercooling unit-- the Coolit Freezone-- that uses pelts to give subambient temps going to the CPU. I think you would be much safer going with a prebuilt unit like that than trying DIY, unless you are willing to risk your hardware for better temps.

I'm starting a worklog later tonight (or possibly tomorrow night if it takes me too long or if I can't find a memory stick reader) that uses a 350w pelt in a WC loop in a very interesting way... If you need any more info about pelts or anything specific, go ahead and ask, I've researched them way too much. :D

Edit: worklog will start tomorrow, I don't have a memory stick reader, so I can't import pics yet >_<

[Arcygenical]

I've got peltiers in my house. 3 of them.

A 120w, a 320w and a 420w. They're horribly inefficient, and dump one HELL of a lot of heat on their hotsides. I can't even RUN the 420 as I don't have a radiator able to dissipate all it's heat (420w at idle + any heat it transports...)

I'd steer clear of almost ANY peltier system unless you're water-cooling it. In which case, a 225w pelt can do wonders on and overclocked quadcore CPU, a 125 can do nice things to a dual.