Tell me about Peltiers, please?

I finally saw my first picture of a pelt... I know they're for cooling and that they transfer heat from one side of it's surface to the other, but how does it work, where does it go and how good are they, really. I say them at Danger Den and they seem pretty inexpensive, alone, but what more does one have to do to have these things work? Gimme soem details, please? Thought I'd see what I could find.

Thanks.

On the frontpage thier is a section just for Peltiers

My suggestion to you is that before you start playing with them, do the research and protect yourself from condensation.

My experience with peltiers is this.... Pick your pelt carefully. I am way out of date (pIII 650 @1G) but the same things apply for cooling. I have had really good luck with the pelts I have bought from tedist.com (I neither work for or with them, I just like their product). You need to consider that your heatsink/waterblock has to be able to dump the heat of both your processor and the TEC. It all depends on what processor you run. I am a bit hesitant to recommend using a peltier unless you are watercooling. To get adequate airflow over the heatsink, your system would have to be moving so much air that it would sound like an old A-6 intruder (very loud aircraft that proves aerodynics are unneccesary if you accelerate enough). You also need to be aware that peltiers have some greedy power supply demands (to be effective for CPU cooling anyway). Choose your wattage carefully, a pelt that is too weak may actually yield WORSE temps. if the pelt is too overloaded, it will fail. A failed pelt could yield some expensive damage to an unattend computer. hope this helps