Thermo-electric Mini-fridge

N

nst6563

2[H]4U
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Sep 15, 2003
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Here's the scoop. I was given one of those thermoelectric refrigerators b/c the power supply for it was dead. It's a sunbeam unit, and I suppose is about 1.5cubic feet inside. The power supply was 12v @4.2A.

Assuming that the pelt is a 50w unit,what would be good for this? anything? I know it wouldn't fly as use on the cpu or gpu, and my hdd's don't really need it as they've got their own fan on them.

Don't really have room on my desk for a drink cooler...soooo...hehehe..what's that leave??? Mod a nother power supply to just use with the mini fridge? I was kinda hoping something "cooler" (no pun intended).
 
Make a Case airconditioner. Yeah, that's right. Strap on a Thermalright HR-01 on the cold side, any stock AMD/Intel HSF on the right side, and position it so the cold thermalright is over your XP90 intake fan...

:)
 
damn...that would need a friggin' HUGE case :p

I have an old Inwin Full tower that I modded to have a 120 in the front and either another 120 in the rear, or two power supplies. The air conditioner would be a good idea...although...really how well would that work with heatpipes? I mean, the heatpipes work by the fluid inside evaporating and condensing in a cooler part of the tube...if it's cold all the time...woulnd't it be better to just have a big assed copper cooler with a lot of fins? IE, SLK-97 variety?
 
Yeah, most definitely. I didn't really think it over too well ;).

Hmmm. You'd need to find a big ass copper HSF that isn't the regular style... IE it would have to "look" like a radiator (just as the HR01 does) for it to really work.
 
hmmmm....I wonder...
I've never watercooled...but have often thought about just getting one of those cheapy kits and sort of "getting my feet wet" with an old P3 system I have that's sort of collecting dust and eating electricity doing some folding. Guess I could use it on one of those cheap watercooling kits and cool the water a bit. thoughts? I figured a cheap $50 kit would be a good start into w/c that way I don't blow a few hundred on a full blown high quality setup that I may decide I'd rather not use.
 
I don't think the compressors in fridges are designed to run 24/7. methinks this ac unit wouldn't last too long
 
Chiliman said:
I don't think the compressors in fridges are designed to run 24/7. methinks this ac unit wouldn't last too long
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Except they're talking about a TEC 'mini fridge'. It uses a thermoelectric cooler aka peltier.
 
If you ran the peltier on a very large aluminum heatsink, and stuck that into your water, you'd definitely get rid of about 40w of heat from your loop.

Only problem is, the water in the res would have to be moving fast enough so that it didn't freeze/ use more antifreeze, which would hurt your performance all around.
 
Arcygenical said:
If you ran the peltier on a very large aluminum heatsink, and stuck that into your water, you'd definitely get rid of about 40w of heat from your loop.

Only problem is, the water in the res would have to be moving fast enough so that it didn't freeze/ use more antifreeze, which would hurt your performance all around.
Click to expand...


hmmm....that is DEFINATELY possible..as I have quite a few large aluminum heatsinks lying around. A couple Stock AMD heatsinks, a vantec Aeroflow, 2stock intel heatsinks, and a couple others that I'm not quite sure where they came from. I may mess around with this idea. A cheap $50-60 kit, some extra tubing from lowes and a res. Mount the pelt unit in the res like mentioned....hmmmm...I think I might give that a shot and see how it does on my old P3 (no loss there if I smoke it :p )
 
ok, I got to messing around with this pelt unit, and I took an old dell laptop power brick and adapted it for use. This thing gets friggin' cold! Within a minute there was frost on the cold side, and the stock AMD hsf unit i had attached to the hot side was too hot to touch. The laptop power brick is a 70w unit (18.5v @ 3.8A). I think i might have another one that's stronger, but i'm going to get an old 250w at psu and give it a shot.

Maybe I'll get a big Typhoon for the cpu and use my XP-90 for the pelt...so if this thing is oh...100+ watts...I may definately look into using it with a W/C setup.

could this pelt be a lot stronger than what the power brick for the mini-fridge allowed?
 
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