peltier may be bad due to moisture?

[Burning Phoenix]

2 weeks ago i thougth i had blown my motherboard due high overclocking experiments and voltages. Seeing that in the past year or more overclocking i never burnt a P3 chip and only burnt the motherboards i thought Intel chips don't burn up. Wrong! Well at least never P3 chips. Now i went and ordered another P4 board thinking that was the problem and when it arrived i tried it but still nothing. Now i'm ****ed for waisting more money before Christmas but i want my computer back instead of this borrowed Cyrix 300 Packard bell junk! Anyways the next thing it had to be was the P4 1.7 chip, which did smell burnt. Now i bought another 1.8 ghz for $197 and just got it yesterday. It works again!

Here is the situation. I think these peltiers either have a life expectancy of a year or so or condensation killed it and then allowed my overclocked chip to burn. I had been using it for the previous systems of P3 700@1022 , P3 800@1120. Both of these were able to maintain temps around -15C using 1 72W peltier and home made waterblock. Well now with the P4 i bought the DD waterblock and coldplate to which the peltier will be sandwiched between. After 4 months of using this and burning the p4 chip i took the peltier out and found moisture around and even seemed like it got under the peltier because the artic silver looked runny with small rivers. I did have closed cell rubber around this by the way. Ok What killed my chip peltier age or moisture? Also I noticed a large power drain when i turned on the 2nd PSU where the peltiers and fans were attached to which the PSU fan almost didn't move. Could this have been a warning to the peltier was about to give?

[TruckChase!]

- Ok What killed my chip peltier age or moisture?

Based off the information you gave, I'd definately say moisture. I'd highly reccomend using potted peltier modules... you can get them from www.tedist.com. Coating the outside with silicon after the fact just isn't as good. Here's a quote from TE Technology:

"We recommend potting for most of our modules. Pottingmeans sealing the edges of the ceramic to lock outmoisture. Our potting material is superior to siliconesealants in sealing out water vapor, thus providing greaterlong-term reliability. Potting also increases the overallstrength of the module. The standard charge is $2.00 permodule. "

I had sealed one with silicone only to find out later that the seal was no good due to the extreme temperature stresses that the peltier put on the bond.

Could this have been a warning to the peltier was about to give?

I dunno.. I've had a couple peltiers die but nothing like that ever happened.

[Diggrr]

The high current draw could mean that the pelt is already dying, since they're a grid pattern inside, they can fail in sections before it finally stops conducting all together. I've plugged in old pelts before to find only sections frost over.

As for closed cell rubber? Is this neoprene? (like mouse pads?)
I personally, am not a big fan of using this. Some are truly closed cell, and some are not. When I wash my mouse pad for example, it gets soaked and takes a day or two to dry out. A sure sign that it is not closed cell...it should be waterproof. You should not be able to wring it out like a sponge.

A good peltier is supposed to go 100,000 hours...you're falling a tad short on this, so I would definately start with a factory sealed module, and the closed cell rubber would be highly suspect as well.