Overclocking Using an Element of Peltier

U

UniversalTruth

Veteran
Hey, guys! What's up?
Basically my problem is this:
I am using a Thermaltake Toughpower 750 W PSU
and an 130-170 W element of Peltier which has the following characteristics: 12 V, I= (0 to 10 A), Vmax= 15.4 V

So my question is: will the element draw as much as it needs (ie 10 A) from the power supply or somehow the power supply will try to increase the current to 18 A (as specified by the manufacturer, 12V line- 1 A min and 18 A max)?

And if we put a 400 W (I=26 A, Vmax= 15.4V) element, will it work properly on a Thermaltake Toughpower 850 W PSU, which may handle up to 30 A on the 12 V line.

Do we have to adjust and control that currents (and more importantly how) in order to achieve some success?

Thanks a lot in advance.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Peltiers are notoriously power-hungry, and sometimes dangerous depending on how they're applied.

You can pretty much assume that the element will draw as much current as it can (10A at 12V, or whatever specs state), ALL the time. A PSU capable of delivering 30A per rail should be able to handle that easily, so that's not really the issue.

The thing is, 10A of peltier cooling will have a considerable cooling effect, so if whatever component you're cooling doesn't put out enough heat its temperature will quickly drop below ambient and then likely into freezing, bringing condensation and crystallization of water vapor in the air. IE, you'll get ice, in your PC. This is going to kill your stuff if you don't insulate properly.
 
Yeah that's going to be very troublesome with today's CPUs that can range from 20W to 120W when idle or loaded. You will have a lot of condensation and ice formation if you don't insulate it thoroughly. Tricky, dangerous stuff....
 
Even during my heyday of massive overclocks and system tweaking, I never bothered with peltiers because of the issues they present. As the season changes and the room temps change I would have to babysit it significantly more than a water cooled setup even a chilled water cooled setup.

In this day and age with the massive amount of power control and idle technology, running air cooled is plenty fine for me. I retired my water cooling systems last year.
 
When I first heard of peltiers i was like omg bestest thing evar
but as you do some more research you start to learn of their shortcomings

perhaps if your good with electronics and i would assume you are otherwise you wouldnt have a peltier
perhaps look at rigging up a variable resistor to a temperature sensor
 
Yeah, peltiers aren't worth the hassle. If you don't get ice given today's throttling tech, you will get condensation. Plus the power you put into making the cold side cold, generates more heat on the hot side which goes into your case and then has to be vented to the outside. Your CPU may get cold (and wet), but every other component in your case and on your motherboard gets extra-heated, and peltiers do chuck out a surprising amount of heat.

Water cooling is actually more practical, and there was even some watercooling setup a while back that used peltiers on the radiator to cool the water below ambient rather than put the peltier directly on the CPU.
 
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
there was even some watercooling setup a while back that used peltiers on the radiator to cool the water below ambient rather than put the peltier directly on the CPU.
Click to expand...
The company that did that's called CoolIT, I believe. They're canucks IIRC, and might actually have some products still of that nature. It wasn't that long ago, two-three years ago maybe since they did quite a lot of deveopment on that front. Dell used their coolers in some of their XPS boxes.

Nowadays, plain water is much easier to handle and way less exotic. A Corsair closed system isn't really going to cost more than a high-end air cooler + fans, and should be very reliable too. It's only if you want DIY stuff with high-flow pumps, custom blocks, northbridge and/or GPU blocks as well, and so on that it starts to become really costly and requiring arcane powers to put together.
 
Grall said:
The company that did that's called CoolIT, I believe. They're canucks IIRC, and might actually have some products still of that nature. It wasn't that long ago, two-three years ago maybe since they did quite a lot of deveopment on that front. Dell used their coolers in some of their XPS boxes.

Nowadays, plain water is much easier to handle and way less exotic. A Corsair closed system isn't really going to cost more than a high-end air cooler + fans, and should be very reliable too. It's only if you want DIY stuff with high-flow pumps, custom blocks, northbridge and/or GPU blocks as well, and so on that it starts to become really costly and requiring arcane powers to put together.
Click to expand...

Gigabyte V10 also uses Peltier in it's design.

I've had my share of fun with Peltiers in the K6-2 - Athlon times, but above mentioned difficulties made me move towards more practical cooling solutions.
 
Peltiers can be a super-cool (or hot) solution to a problem, IF you have the needed electronics to make it work like you want it to.
 
unfortunately you usually just change the problem from remove the heat from the cpu to remove the heat from the hot side of the peltier
 
Davros said:
unfortunately you usually just change the problem from remove the heat from the cpu to remove the heat from the hot side of the peltier
Click to expand...

Just use another peltier... :LOL:
 
Yes, out of your case and into your furnace or outside the building...
 
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