Is TEC cooling a viable alternative?

[ZeGermans]

I was reading this article over at hardocp and they seemed to conclude that if you were willing to spend the money on the water block and the aux PSU, you could get great results... however, I've been looking around and there's hardly anyone that uses TEC cooling... they either use water, or for more oompf, go straight to $1000 phase change systems. I was wondering why? Is TEC a bad solution, or do people simply not use it because they don't think about it?

 

[Tiamat]

phase change and peltier have condensation issues. Its real tough to get a good seal around.

If you are into watercooling already, I would probably just invest in better/more radiators.

If you are an enthused overclocker, then fine, go to these more exotic measures. That would be the only reason why you would need below water's freezing point type temperatures.

 

[Greenman]

Originally posted by: Tiamat
phase change and peltier have condensation issues. Its real tough to get a good seal around.

If you are into watercooling already, I would probably just invest in better/more radiators.

If you are an enthused overclocker, then fine, go to these more exotic measures. That would be the only reason why you would need below water's freezing point type temperatures.

Condensation isn't that big of a deal if you plan for it. The easy answer is to hang the motherboard upside down with a pan under it to catch the drips. If you just have to have the board in a standard case, make a small plastic trough under the cpu with a drip tube leading out of the case. I've never tried either method, but I'm certin it would work, water always runs down hill.