TEC Cooling feasibility and the Core 2 Duo

[BonzaiDuck]

Couple years ago, I read through a white-paper on the use of TEC coolers on the newer Pentium 4 processors (pre-Smithfield). Various measures of thermal resistance, CPU thermal wattage and the wattage needed to drive the TEC cooler suggested that TEC was no longer feasible for CPU cooling.

Primarily, this reflected the fact that while thermal wattage of processors had increased, the areal size of "CPU real-estate" had remained the same or decreased, and that a TEC's effectiveness in cooling was a direct function of contact-surface area size. So at certain wattages, TEC could only enhance other technologies like water-cooling. The converse of that propositiion involved the skyrocketing wattage requirements to power a TEC cooler under this scenario.

Has Core 2 Duo changed the feasibility of using a TEC cooler? Are there recent studies which re-examine TEC as a Core-2-Duo cooling option?

 

[Zap]

TECs are interesting, but have their share of issues. It would probably be better to use high end water cooling, or if you HAVE to have sub-ambient temperatures then perhaps phase change - weren't there some kits on the market in the $500 range?

Potential issues with TECs:

- Takes a lot of power, higher powered units can take in the hundreds of watts.

- Cold side goes below ambient temperatures meaning condensation. If you have to prep and insulate the socket area against condensation, may as well go for phase change.

- Needs even better cooling than normal because not only are you cooling the CPU, but you are cooling the extra heat put out by the TEC.

- If hot side gets too hot, TEC kills itself.

- If TEC stops working (dies or power loss) then it magically becomes an insulator between CPU and cooling - imagine just taking your HSF or water block off the CPU while it is running.

- If you don't get a powerful enough TEC and your CPU puts out more heat than it can handle, then you'll have an overheating CPU.

- It adds a layer between CPU and cooler/block, and normal mounting mechanisms may not be able to handle that.

If you still want to use TECs, consider a pre-made and configured "kit" like this. Note that I have never used anything like this (but have read up on it before out of interest). These kits seem to be configured to take the guesswork out of using TECs and also seems to adjust the power it gives to the TEC to avoid condensation.