What are peltiers for anyway?

[blizzardsnake]

anybody? whats its true purpose? what does it have to do wif water cooling

 

[asmodean]

Don't know what they're originally designed for, but they seem to be good for cooling the CPU...

It's basically two metal plates attached (different metals!) and when you put some voltage/current thru it, other plate gets cold & the other hot. AFAIK.

Hope that tells you the reason for watercooling the pelt.

 

[Fro]

it's 2 ceramic plates with conductors in the center. run avoltage through the conductors and they produce a heatpumping effect. uses other than pc cooling? you know those electric ice chests? you change the diretion of the cord or flip a switch and they start heating? those would be low power pelts from what i've heard

 

[asmodean]

What is the heat output from, say a 80W peltier?

 

[Fro]

umm 80 watts

 

[oc jason]

Funny FRO, but i think he means how much heat in degrees not watts like how hot is it-that way he know what kind of cooling to use

 

[Fro]

well that's just the thing, it outputs 80watts of heat, the tempurature of the hotside depends upon ow much you're cooling it, same as the temp on the cold side. if you dont use any cooling at all the whole thing will just get hot. so it's made to move 80 watts of heat. if you're cpu puts out 40 watts of hewat, that's more than enough to dissipate the cpus heat and bring it under ambient temp, if your cpu puts out 70 watts of heat, you gotta realize the contact points arent perfect conductors (cpu, coltplate, pelt, heatsink) even with a really good tim, so it will probably dissipate most of the heat, but if it cant keep up your processor will just get hot.

if you think of heat as a physical thing, and the pelt as a pump(which is what it is) you want to pump enough heat away from the cpu to keeop it cool. if the cpu produces mroe heat than the pump can handle it starts to overflow, just like pumping water out of a bucket that has water running into it

 

[asmodean]

Hmm.. Just figured something out? If PELT_COLD_SIDE=-20C and DeltaTemp=71C then PELT_HOT_SIDE=51C? Or not... As higher DT is better?

 

[Fro]

but you have to add in the heat output from the cpu itself. and you cant just add it as a change in temp to the coldside, as the heat is being pumped out the hotside etc etc etc. the colder you can keep the hotside, the colder the coldside gets

 

[asmodean]

Yes, I did that in that calc, but it sucks anyway. Don't know... Maybe I'll try someday, when I get a peltier....