TEC Aircooled Radiator

[UnknownSeeker]

Ok so I was thinking about the AirCon PAC 400 (the almost useless air conditioner for your computer that takes up 3 front bays and has been out for a long time, but it can send air into the system at about 18 C with an ambient of 25 C)

what if you where to upgrade it a little and use something similar to send cool air to a rad (since the Aircon uses a 47 watt TEC how about using a 80 watt TEC instead)

so my idea would be to use Zalman CNPS6500A attached to the cool side of a 80 watt TEC with a Swiftech MCX775 and a Panaflo U1A 80mm Fan on the hot side

so this way the air would be pushed through a fan to the cooled heatsink which the cooled air would travel to the rad, making the ambient temperature lower then it is, but not low enough to worry about condensation (I really don’t want to have to go through insulating my whole system that is why I am doing this), there will be a box just as wide as the cold heatsink, made to hold all of this. I will insulate the inside of the box. So the whole thing will be the rad with the box attached to it and then the fan attached to the box

I have no real experience with TECs (that’s why I am asking about it), but I am wondering how well it would work.

I have 2 main questions
1) Will the heatsink will be able to keep the peltier cool
2) How well will the TEC be able to cool down the heatsink and then pass it to the air

also is anyone out there running a TEC off a heatsink, if so can you posts pictures and give any insight you can.

Info:
Currently I don't think I will keep the tec on 24x7 it will probably be on a switch that I will turn off unless I am playing games or do something else that is demanding

current setup:
PA 120.1
Swiftech Storm
MCP 600
1/2 inch tubing
T-Line

I currently have a Antec HE 550 so I should have plenty of power for the TEC so that shouldn’t be a problem (and I even have an extra antec true power 480 if need be)

 

[cre8chaos]

Air cooled Tec's have never worked very well but if you do it take lots of pics and let us know how it goes.

 

[holli4pirating]

You could always use a real air conditioner and ghetto mod some kind of duct from that to your rad/computer.

 

[Bloodgod42]

You could always use a real air conditioner and ghetto mod some kind of duct from that to your rad/computer.

LOL. I have actually thought of that, as well as a second duct to a window fan to exhast, and then you encase the entire unit in a sound dampened box, and BLAMO! You have complete and precise climate control for your pc (add humidity control of choice as needed - defined by region)!!!

Seriously though, In theory, given your design, it will give you a slight drop - slightly better than the review I would guess, but Im not sure it's worth $100. They were on sale for $39 a couple of months ago...I thought about getting one at that price just to see if I could mod it to be internal.

Let us know how it works out if you get it...Im curious.

Bloodgod42

 

[viciousking]

I purchased a system from Vigor that had the New Monsoon II TEC cooler. I am able to run an Athlon 4800+ (2.4G) at 2.94G very stable. While running Prime95 small FFT torture test, it max out at 45C under full load (Room temperature of 25C). My system is configured as follows:

Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe
AMD Athlon X2 AM2 4800+ Overclocket to 2.94G 1.66V
Vigor Monsoon II TEC Cooler
Corsair 8500 2G @ 800MHz 3-3-3-Auto 2.25V
Dual XFX 7900GTX 512MB in SLI mode
Dual WD Raptor 150G in RAID 0
Vigor Force w/MACS Super Tower Case

I am using the read out of Asus Probe that came with my M2N32-SLI deluxe board. There is a review that just came out from PC Perspective:

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=273

The reviewer pointed out:

"The performance of most traditional heatsink fans and water-cooling systems that rely on convection cooling changes linearly with the ambient room air temperature (at least within the temperature range of most CPU operation). If the ambient air temperature goes up 10°C, then so will the CPU temperature (Delta T remains the same) and vise versa. However, with active TEC cooling this is NOT the case......

Artificially increasing the ambient room air temperature to 36°C (recycling warm exhaust air) forced the Monsoon II into active mode. This is also a more realistic internal case temperature. Under these conditions performance was outstanding as indicated by a negative Delta T (-3.4°C). Yes, the CPU (cold plate) temperature was actually lower than the ambient room air temperature. In this active mode the TEC was turned on almost constantly and the fan speed cycled between medium and high (mostly medium)."

This cooler really worked out with me, because sometimes my room temp do get up in the 30s C. There are a couple more reviews that talks about this cooler:

http://www.vigorgaming.com/reviews/review-060106.html
http://www.vigorgaming.com/reviews/review-041806.html

That is my 2 cents.

 

[Arcygenical]

I think a better method of doing this would be to fabricate a long waterblock, with really big channels cut into it (think of a winding river). Almost like a larger Maze4 block, about the size of a HD block. Put a couple of heatsinks on these peltiers and you're good to go. hell, you could even WATERCOOL them with a 2nd loop...

Look into the thermalright HR series... It's about the size of a 120mm fan... and you could duct it straight into your radiator.