thermoelectric cooling: is it good? dangers involved?

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nalanthi

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Feb 18, 2003
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i was just browsing around the SwiftTech site and noticed the "Thermoelectric cooling" link in the left nav. here are the same links...

MCW50-T™ Liquid Cooled Thermoelectric Assembly for GPUs
MCW5002-PT™ LIQUID COOLED THERMOELECTRIC ASSEMBLY FOR INTEL® PENTIUM® 4 PROCESSORS
MCW-CHILL 452™ Thermoelectric liquid chiller
S320-12 Power supply kit

so my questions are...

1. have any of you used this method of cooling before?
2. what kind of temps do you get with it?
3. did you have any problems with the components?
4. what dangers are involved?
5. how do you avoid those dangers if any?
6. does anyone besides SwiftTech make this stuff?

thanks in advance.
 
an 80 watt pelt won't give you that great of temps, they'll be better than just plain water cooling but a 226watt pelt will give you MUCH lower temps. what scares me about doing thermoelectric is if for whatever reason your pelt fails, yous cpu is doomed. but i guess you could hook up some sort of relay to it that would turn off the power in that event. also when you turn off a peltier, both sides heat up. the drastic change from cold to hot temps can cause your cpu to crack. ive seen alot of northwoods that have had the heat spreaders come off and even crack the die because of thermal expansion.

1. have any of you used this method of cooling before?
2. what kind of temps do you get with it?
3. did you have any problems with the components?
4. what dangers are involved?
5. how do you avoid those dangers if any?
6. does anyone besides SwiftTech make this stuff?
Click to expand...

1. ive experimented with it a little bit, i didnt do it because i did not want to insulate my components from condensation.

2. below ambient, i had an 75W and it got down to high 40F

3. condensation

4. condensation shorting things out, frying your cpu if the pelt fails

5. insulate your cpu socket, put a relay on the pelt.

6. no clue.
 
Originally posted by nalanthi
1. have any of you used this method of cooling before?
2. what kind of temps do you get with it?
3. did you have any problems with the components?
4. what dangers are involved?
5. how do you avoid those dangers if any?
6. does anyone besides SwiftTech make this stuff?
Click to expand...

I have run several water cooling setups with pelters and have decided that they are not worth it.

Yes I was getting zero or better temps, but I was also creating close to 350 watts of heat that I had to dissapate. Pelters are not very efficient. somewhere on the order of 25%.

There are a few ways you can break things or get hurt with pelters. If you run too much voltage into pelters they will crack and fail, creating a thermal electric blanket for whatever you are cooling. If you put the pelter in backwards you will fry things.

Having a water pump fail or fergetting to turn it on will cause the water in the system to boil, then the coolant leaks out, next the temp rises past the 100c temp limit imposed by the boiling water, by now your processor or whatever you are cooling is long dead. If you haven't shut it off yet the temp continues to rise, the thermal couples inside the pelter start to fail and dead short. This causes the current draw to increase. If you are lock the power supply you have will crowbar and shut of. If not, and it still can hadle the current, the rate of temp increase will rice rapidly. The pelter will continue to fail, if you are lucky the power leads will melt off. If not you have a real fire hazard, just about everything in your box is toast and the pelter will finaly desintegrate and open the circut. Either that or the power supply will blow first.

You can avoid these danges mostly with carefull planning and vigilence. Make sure you do enough reaserch that you know what you are doing. Go over to overclockers.com. They have several artivles on pleter cooling that you will find helpfull.

Dangerden is another source for water cooling gear.

Remeber murphy's law and the fancier the plumming the easier it is to stop up the pipes.
 
a much safer alternative in getting sub-ambient temps is doing phasechange. you can piece meal that together easily with a cheap bar fridge from walmart or something. ironically enough, alot of those small fridges run off large peltiers.
 
It's ok, but I find the hydro bill isn't worth it. Phase change is much better IMO for sub zero temps from what I've heard from others.
 
1. have any of you used this method of cooling before?
Yes I just got an 80 watt TEC on a maze4-1 block setup on my 9500pro
2. what kind of temps do you get with it?
No sensor but temps are dependent on voltage fed to TEC, water temps, radiator dissipation capabilities, wattage of heat your cooling, wattage of TEC, waterblock, and flow rate.
3. did you have any problems with the components?
Nope. I DID tape the power leads together and my dad pointed out that it might be an issue. Taped them seperatly and I'm runnin great now :) Pulled everything out of the case for nothing...
4. what dangers are involved?
Condensation and TECs or pump dying. Condensation isint that hard to prevent with only the PCB and TEC to insulate. If the TEC dies than whatever is under it will roast. If the pump fails and the TEC keeps running the water will heat up untill the plexi top of O-ring melts and everything esplodes :p
5. how do you avoid those dangers if any?
First off make sure everything is insulated and every possible crack in the insulation is sealed. Make sure you have a high quality TEC PSU and pump and if possible relay everything so if one fails the others shuts off to.
6. does anyone besides SwiftTech make this stuff?
DangerDens maze4-1 blocks are good for the CPU and GPU. I have the GPU one and plan on upgrading my maze4 CPU to a 226 watt TEC and the GPU to a 176 watt TEC in a month or so.
 
acascianelli said:
2. below ambient, i had an 75W and it got down to high 40F
.
Click to expand...

woah ho ho, hold on there killer. was that on a 233/MMX or something? please more specs as I would LOVE that temp, and with such a small current draw
 
uhh i dunno what you guys are doin...

but the intel boards i've used and amd boards i've used have a temp shut off so i've never had my water boil or anything before... (i've forgotten to plug in my pump).

water cooling is safe if you knwo what your'e doing (combined with TEC cooling).

so yeah...

i have a prometeia mach 1 for my cpu and a swiftech mcw50t for my gpu and i've had no problems at all... nor have i killed any hardware due to my cooling devices.
 

but the intel boards i've used and amd boards i've used have a temp shut off so i've never had my water boil or anything before...

If the TEC PSU isint rigged to shut off with the PC than it will keep running and the water will still boil even if the PC shuts off.
 
kronchev said:
woah ho ho, hold on there killer. was that on a 233/MMX or something? please more specs as I would LOVE that temp, and with such a small current draw
Click to expand...

sorry, i should have worded that differently. what i meant is that the pelt ALONE could cool down to that temp, not the pelt on a cpu.
 
z3r0- said:

but the intel boards i've used and amd boards i've used have a temp shut off so i've never had my water boil or anything before...

If the TEC PSU isint rigged to shut off with the PC than it will keep running and the water will still boil even if the PC shuts off.
Click to expand...


pics or shens
 
z3r0- said:

but the intel boards i've used and amd boards i've used have a temp shut off so i've never had my water boil or anything before...

If the TEC PSU isint rigged to shut off with the PC than it will keep running and the water will still boil even if the PC shuts off.
Click to expand...


Only if the pump shuts off with the PC might there be instant damage. With the pump on and fans off, water will continue to ciculate and slowly heat up... who knows what will melt first, but it will probably be the tubing melting or leaking before the water boils.
 
i put a 25W peltier on a 386-25mhz server i bought at goodwill. By the time i turned it on, and mowed my lawn i had ice sticking out a few inches from the socket. The Windows 3.11 had frozen (literally).

since the 386 barley would get warm without any heatsink or fan, i figured the 25W peltier would work, and it did. I wont bother with it again, because of condensation and even my biggest heatsink (8x5x6") from a radio cant suck the heat away from my large 130W peltier.
 
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