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peltier setup

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94tbird

Registered
Joined
May 20, 2002
Location
NY
ive never used peltiers before but i do have a water cooled computer. im testing the peltier, a 156w one from becooling, potted peltier on a 300w ps all alone which is what it will be running on. my problem is that both sides are getting hot, not cold. is this because i am testing it without a heatsink on it or what? ive reveresed the wires and get the same effect. it gets cold for about 2 seconds then heats up to burning hot temps. please help

Ron
 
yes dont leave it on without a heatsink of some kind. People normaly test it to see what side gets cold for like 1-2 sec before they put everything together but thats it or it WILL burn up. And I hope you are using a waterblock for that 156watt pelt, air cooling isnt great for that size of pelt.
 
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i do have a waterblock. its a watercooled system. right now i have the resivour un a refrigerator and the radiator in a freezer but i wanted to try a peltier
 
johnnyw said:
use the pelt and let it be cololed by the wblock

Johnny, I see you've been doing a lot of posting without conveying anything useful. Need to get your post count up for some reason?
 
One word from the last post... ouch. lol ; )

Take your tec and find somthing BIG and metal. (flat also) place the cold side of the pelt in your palm and hold the hot side against that object. turn on the power and see how long you can last before you hand get unbearably cold.
 
"Miss Hoover, my tongue touched the pelt, and now my tongue is stuck to the pelt" <--- Ralph Wiggam

Seriously though - I tested 2 220watt pelts back to back on a decent athlon heatsink. Result? Heatsink got too hot to touch after 30secs, and the cold side of the pelts was only cool. Wouldn't even freeze anything. That was with two 92mm fans overvolted and ducted to the heatsink.
I also got some extra chunky cable and gold plated banana plugs today to link up the power supply to the pelts. I have 2 220watt pelts for my dual processor rig which is watercooled at the moment, but moving to peltiers soon (next few weeks)
 
frostmeister said:
I tested 2 220watt pelts back to back on a decent athlon heatsink. Result? Heatsink got too hot to touch after 30secs, and the cold side of the pelts was only cool. Wouldn't even freeze anything. That was with two 92mm fans overvolted and ducted to the heatsink.

Wow...440 watts of peltier on a 100 watt heatsink...no wonder you couldn't touch it.:eh?:
That's FAR from sufficient cooling for what you had there, bud. Lucky you didn't toast 'em.
 
I was only testing them diggr, and knew it was insufficient. I was just making the point that that's what can happen without sufficient cooling. As for blowing them up, I think they were far from being stressed; The hot side of the hot pelt wasn't even at 100C which I'd say is when things start getting shaky, given that the ceramic coating is good for as hot as the solder will go - 187C if I remember correctly for standard solder. Having never tested a peltier to destruction though, I wouldn't know.
 
frostmeister said:
I was only testing them diggr, and knew it was insufficient. I was just making the point that that's what can happen without sufficient cooling. As for blowing them up, I think they were far from being stressed; The hot side of the hot pelt wasn't even at 100C which I'd say is when things start getting shaky, given that the ceramic coating is good for as hot as the solder will go - 187C if I remember correctly for standard solder. Having never tested a peltier to destruction though, I wouldn't know.

Pelts use low temperature solder, and one of the common failure modes is for the leads to come unsoldered when they get too hot.

I believe the reason they use the low temp solder is because the active parts of the pelt would be damaged if they assembled them with standard solder.
 
Yeah - 85C is a temp I just found... My TEC's still work though, and I don't think I was running any risk of breaking them - I think the heatsink was about 50 - 60C max - given the temps that I've had on a heatsink with a 1400 Tbird and mainboard temp monitors before. On a different note - check out my chunky cable :)
 

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i was watercooling my 40watt tec with my chipset block and i stuck my tounge to it.... no more needs to be said ;)
 
maskedgeek said:
i was watercooling my 40watt tec with my chipset block and i stuck my tounge to it.... no more needs to be said ;)

Well, I won't say it :eek:
 
lol, it hirt for a day.... i guess i was a little too bored, then i stuck my finger to the cold plate of my 80, and my finger was kinda sweaty.... got stuck, i couldnt get it off, i had to shut it off for a little bit:p
 
hmm i want to try pelting... what size/power pelt would i need?
my system is in the sig. everything is watercooled.

how much would pelting decrease my temps? thx
 
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