Smart peltiers

[Christoph]

While looking at some other forums and seeing that some pelt lovers were getting 30 C cpus and 60 *C water, the idea hit me of having a smart peltier setup.
It would be a normal pelt setup, except that the pelt's power would be attached to a thermostat that would only cool the water if it was above a certain temperature. The temp could be set low enough to be comfy for the proc, but high enough to avoid condensation.
Any thoughts on how to pull it off?

[Colin]

If you are going to the trouble and expense of pelting a system, why not take advantage of the extra cooling power? Limiting a pelted system to ambient temperature will limit your overclock. How many of us can stand to do this? :D :D :D

[Christoph]

I'm not doing this for now. I'm building a bong cooler, and I want to do one thing at a time.
I was thinking that more control would be better (setting it to 0 or to 15 or whatever). Also, is there an optimal temperature for a CPU? There must be a point of diminishing returns. Anyone know it for an Athlon T-bird 1.4gHz?

[Morphoius]

That point you talk about is colder than you will ever get your CPU. Also if you want steady temps then just run folding@home or seti and not worry about it.