urgent peltier question, especially for those with Alpha PAL6035

[mdh]

Oh wise ones,

getting my first peltier today. have done my homework, and think I know enough to proceed - save for one little detail: it seems to me the "springy" bar clamp that holds my PAL down on the CPU will have to be tweaked to make room to fix the peltier in between them. if I don't bend it a bit, the clamp will be exerting too much pressure yes/no?

please respond asap, want to install tonight.

thanks,

mike

 

[Mac42]

Um... what evactly are you cooling with the peltier? I hope that's not an AMD product. If you try that then you're going to end up with a fried cpu and possibly a melted heatsink. Lower Intel chips might work, but it depends on the peltier and the heatsink... if your heatsink can't handle the combined heat of the cpu and the peltier then the cpu is going to really heat up.

Just throwing a few warnings out... I really don't know what the situation is.



-=mac=-

 

[BigAir]

You should not use a peltier unless you have a water cooling setup. Most people get negative results when they attempt what you are trying. My advice would be to just run the pal 6035 alone and invest in a water cooler later.

 

[mdh]

it's a 1GHz TBird. don't understand your reasoning about "combined heat". won't the peltier suck the heat right out of that TBird and slap it onto my very capable Alpha PAL6035? please explain. thanks.

 

[Mac42]

Ok, peltiers don't just magicly transfer heat from one side to the other... that takes a bit of power. While one side gets cold the other side gets hot... real hot. If you hold just a peltier between your fingers (touching the cold side with one finger and the hot side with the other) then you'll notice the hot side gets a lot hotter than the cold side gets cold... all that electricity you're pumping into it generates heat too, and that heat has to go somewhere. If you leave the peltier running without a heatsink then the cold side will start to get hot... that's because the heat isn't being transfered out as fast as it's beiing pumped in (and given enough time it woud probably melt or explode). The same thing happens when your heatsink can't handle the amount of heat the peltier is putting out... it starts backing up into the peltier element and the cold side is no longer cold... and that's not good for a CPU.

The combined heat issue: As I stated above, peltiers create a lot of heat themselves. An 80W peltier will create as much, if not more, heat as a TBird. Your heatsink may be able to handle the heat the peltier produces, but it's not going to be able to handle that AND the heat from the CPU that it's going to be pumping through it (both the cpu and the peltier get hot,k and combined that's a LOT of heat). Even with a watercooling setup you'd need at least a 111W peltier to see any real benifits, and by that time you're talking a 150W load on a heatsink... if you can show me where I can get a heatsink to handle that then I'll be one happy man.


-=mac=-