Hi everyone, got a question for ya. I've been doing the 'ol watercooling thing for a few years now in a few different builds. But naturally, after a couple hours of running, the temperatures get warmer than I like (not TOO bad, but up to about 50c on the processor if Im clocked to 4ghz, and the video cards top at about 65c) Also naturally, Im thinking of ways to counter this. The first thing that I can think of is introducing some sort of peltier device into the loop, but I dont know much about them yet. If I understand them correctly, if you have it against something hot, it gets very cold on the hot side, but hot on the other side. Is this right? Or does it just get cold when you power it? I would like to introduce a single 120mm radiator with a few of them affixed to it. No doubt this may not be possible, or Im sure others would do it. Does anyone have any experience or knowledge on the subject? Thank you all in advance for any help.
Peltier's are pretty amazing on how they work, I posted some scientific info below. They act like a mini Air Conditioner in a way. I had one in a a old PowerPC that the cold side would get as low as 20°F. Now the other by product is heat and you will need to make sure you add a heatsink and fan combination to the hot side of it so as not to fry the Peltier. The higher the wattage of the Peltier the more cooling you will get, but remember the heat produced will also go up as well.
One thing to add is that when using these you need to worry about condensation. Peltiers get colder then the ambient temperature which increases the risk of water forming. Just need to be careful and insulate the cpu correctly. Another thing is that they are extremely inefficient. It takes alot more energy to power it then the energy (heat) it pulls away from the cpu.
If you have it cooling the water as opposed to the TEC's that go on the cpu, then you shouldn't have much chance of getting condensation.
You just sandwich the pelt between your water block and a copper plate Cold side down towards CPU hot side up towards water block and the connection has to be tight tight Then you have to insulate everything just like you would if running phase change setup In the long run after buying a stand alone power suply the price to performance and other issues . Its just not practical for a 24/7 rig
Well CoolIt has done it http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...scription=cpu+cooling&name=CoolIT+Systems+Inc. But us DIY doing it i dont think so CoolIt is pretty clever doing it / Just keeping it right above ambient temps Used to get the same results with my Bong setup and throwing ice into the mix
"In the long run after buying a stand alone power suply the price to performance and other issues . Its just not practical for a 24/7 rig" lol, I think I passed "practical" when I did two seperate water loops and 3 GTX's. I have no plans to put something directly on the processor, in fact, my processor runs at darn good temps considering the ambient temp in here, usually around 35c idle 45c under load. Its actually the dedicated loop for my GTX's that I need to work on some more. With just the two cards it was about 45-50c all the time, now with the third card in there Im hovering around 60c. So I need to address that, it will actually overheat given some time. On a side note,, I just finally got my Tri-SLi going, and its ridiculous, in all aspects. The heat is INSANE, the power consumption has me reeling (good thing I just HAPPENED to upgrade to an Nvidia recommended power supply), but the performance is off the hook. So anyway, I was thinking of dedicating a power supply (the back panel I ordered with my mountain mods case has space for 2 PSU's), and putting some peltiers on the radiator instead of fans, or custom fabricating something like what coolit did (actually I got the idea from the coolit system, used it in a custom for someone at work and got me thinkin). Its basically a flow through with fins on it. It had 3 mild peltiers on it, so Im thinking 3 or 4 decent ones. Condensation is something Im not about to expose my hardware too, paid too much to get this far, lol. If anyone has any other suggestions on the issue at hand besides peltier feel free, cuz actually I hate the thought of doing this.
hey you should take at this forum http://www.ocforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=72 that have alot good stickies and info.
Have it working on the radiator instead the the cpu block. Honestly, I'd just look for better Water cooling equipment that trying to do a hybrid peltier+wc setup.
believe me,,, I have. Im not using wussy stuff here. I figured if I was gonna spend the money, I was gonna spend it right. Thats why Im looking for some options to give me another 10c. I think im going to split the cards up along with the processor loop, maybe add the primary card to the cpu loop.
