Please evaluate my proposed Peltier setup

[skrill]

I am a little bit of a newbie to active cooling -- but I have already water-cooled my CPU and now am thinking about actively cooling it with peltier.
I have acess to an awesome external power supply -- so power is not a concern.

My goal is to bring an O/C'ed Athlon XP 1800 to around Zero celcius -- and hopefully get it to 1.9+ ghz stable. Here is my plan.

Use a Maze 2.2 w/ 2 x 120w (24v) pelts. According to my calculations assuming the CPU puts out about 115 watts @ 2.1 Vcore and the pelts combind for about 240w of cooling, and assuming a no load delta of 50c -- this should result in 26c of cooling. My ambient is right around 24c, so we are talking a bit under zero (my bet is that real world cooling would be right at zero - or just above).

I currently am using a Black Ice Rad (120mm Sanyo 100cfm fan), and an Eheim 1048 pump in a closed loop. These items would remain the same (all 3/8" tubing).

Questions:

Will I get my desired zero degree temps under load?

Will the Black Ice be able to remove enough heat to maintain a 0c temp w/ cpu under load? (its rated for 400w of dissipation -- I would only have 240w right??)

Will the CPU get too cold??

Is the Maze 2.2 truly capable of removeing the heat generated by the hot side??

Anything I am overlooking??

Please let me know your thoughts. :D

[Thelemac]

Originally posted by skrill

Questions:

Will I get my desired zero degree temps under load?

Nope.

Will the Black Ice be able to remove enough heat to maintain a 0c temp w/ cpu under load? (its rated for 400w of dissipation -- I would only have 240w right??)

It might be able to handle the heat that you're throwing at it...though it'll be considerably more than 240W. You didn't add in the heat from the CPU...

Will the CPU get too cold??

Not likely. You don't really have to worry about getting those TBirds too cold...you have to really try hard to get them below 50C...

Is the Maze 2.2 truly capable of removeing the heat generated by the hot side??

Absolutely. Colin has good experience with this one.


Anything I am overlooking??


Yes. You can't add the power of TECs when you run them side by side...they're just able to take a larger amount of heat...meaning that you can throw more heat at them and they'll take it down as far as it would for something producing less heat.
This means that you could put that setup on a Duron and a TBird and get approximately the same temps.

To get good temps you'd have to go with at least 172W TECs...though I still don't think that you'd get below zero.

Please let me know your thoughts. :D

[skrill]

Hey thanks for the reply.

Hmm, sounds like hitting 0c with a T-bird is next to impossible.

I didn't know you had to add on the heat of the CPU -- that would mean my little Black Ice would be hit with about 350 watts by my estimation -- damn, that is a lot of heat.

using 2x 172w pelts would far exceed the power of the rad. I would have to upgrade (not really wanting to do that).

Any other thoughts on this??

[Morphoius]

I don't understand this "power of the radiator" thing. The more energy you put into the water the higher the water temp gets and the radiator expells more heat because of it. just make sure you have a decent sized radiator with a good fan on it and don't worry about it's '400 W limit'. you might want to use a bong cooler.

BTW: How are you planing to power the TECs?

Also, Athlon XPs have lower heat output i think so you might not need the larger pelters.

[ve6jhc]

I have hit negative temps with my home made water cooler and two pelts on a Durron 700 running without any overclocking. The biggest problem is not your temps but the condensation. Be sure to seal your CPU socket/motherboard and then insulate the entire CPU/water block with foam pads. I am no longer running the pelts as I did have trouble with condensation and the system doesn't run any better at -5 then it does at 20. For these test I was using tap water flowing into a pinic cooler filled with ice and then pumping water from the cooler to the water block and then back out down the sink drain.

[Warlord2]

colin did 2 120 watt pelts and the results where not good


for a 172 watt pelt the radiator should be fine however if your cooling anything else like video, chipset you would need a nother radiator

0c is almost imposible without a vapochill but I donno about these new chips=]

someone like this guy here (http://www.overclockers.com/tips326/)

got his pretty cool=]

[Colin]

I was tickled with my dual 120 watt pelt results. (http://forums.overclockers.ws/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=14276) Dual 120s are perfect for a Palomino, even at 2 gig and 2.1 Vcore the Palomino is under 120 watts. FWIW, I plan to use dual 120s when I snag an XP.

The problem with the Black Ice radiator is it will not be able to dispose of the heat from the dual pelts and the CPU. With the Black Ice, I would guess your water temps would be near 50C. If you want to use a radiator I would suggest a Big Momma (Fiero heater core) or the new Danger Den Super Cube (http://www.dangerden.com/images/super_cube/both_large.gif). In my Dual 120 thread linked to in the above paragraph there is a link to my dual 172 watt pelt adventures. This may give you some perspective on the stress such a high heat load will put on a radiator.