Mod a Mountain Dew Mini Fridge?!

M

Mnx4

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 29, 2005
Messages
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So I got this fridge from the Transform Your Summer sweepstakes, and I just plugged it in the other day. Sadly, I read the box and it will only cool between 18-20 degrees below ambient, which basically renders it useless for any trips somewhere where it's hot as hell.

So that got me thinkin as to what I could do to make this work better. Would anyone have any sort of information as to how this thing cools? I think it's too small to contain a regular fridges cooling unit. The one thing I did notice was that it has a small, slow moving fan in the back. So would changing the fan out to something faster make it cool better?

Any ideas as to make it work better or info on the fridge? Thanks
 
I've been doing some searching and the cooling unit is called a Thermoelectric cooler, which is also called peltier, so I'm going to assume that it's just like peltier cooling for an extreme cooling solution for chips.

In that vein, if I want it to cool better, I would exchange the slow fan for a faster or higher CFM fan, right?. Is it really going to be that easy? I mean, it seems that with chips, there's contact between the chip and the cooling surface, but in this case, from what i've investigated yesterday, is that it's just a cold block in the back of the fridge hidden behind a plastic cover. I'm not 100% sure if there's a smaller fan that circulates the air from the cold side of the cooler.
 
This has been discussed many many times. It all comes down to efficiency, and TECs aren't really efficient.

They require a ton of power, and a ton of cooling; and if you place them on a water system, they require a ton of prep to prepare for condensation build up.

TECs are actually pretty sweet devices, but they just require a huge fan to cool them enough to make them worth while.
 
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