Thermoelectric CPU Cooling Might Be Making a Comeback

Peter_Brosdahl

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Over the last year, we have seen some CPUs reach downright epic levels of power consumption and, consequently, heat generation. The current champ of such things is the Intel Core i9-10900K. This flagship CPU has can heat up to 91°c and draw around 205 W when overclocked to 5.1 GHz on all cores. At that point, it’s a given you’ll need a liquid cooler and probably at least a 360 mm radiator to keep things in check. Well, what if you want to take things further? Linus Tech Tips did just that and managed to take this processor to 5.7 GHz. It may not be an all-core overclock, but it is close. Six out of ten registered at 5.7 GHz, with the other four at 5.4 GHz. What’s more interesting, though, is his use of a mystery box seen in a...
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TEC's are cool, (no pun intended) but they are huge power hogs. They will also elevate the temp of the entire loop, so I wouldn't use one unless I could have it on every block.

I also wouldn't use one, unless it came with some sort of protective ciruitry to prevent going below the dew point and creating condensation. I fon't feel like messing with grease and such things to isolate everything.

The theory is great though. Elevating the loop temp while keeping the chip temps lower makes the radiators much more efficient at dissipating the heat out of the loop.

Based on the fact that chips use much more power today than they did back when we last used peltiers, those things are likely going to need a lot of power. I foresee the need for dedicated power supplies, and maybe even dedicated extra circuits to our offices to provide enough power.

Oh, the power bills.
 
Eh I think the peltier is much smaller than you think. And built into the box in such a way as to be immune to issues with condensation. Hell I called it out when the ltt video was posted. Liquid cooling a peltier makes sense.
 
Grimlakin said:
Eh I think the peltier is much smaller than you think. And built into the box in such a way as to be immune to issues with condensation. Hell I called it out when the ltt video was posted. Liquid cooling a peltier makes sense.
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From what I recall from back in the day (it's been a while though, so take it with a grain of salt) TEC's power requirements exponentially grow with the amount of heat they need to dissipate. That coupled with the fact that CPU's dissipate a lot more heat today...

A control system preventing condensation would be absolutely necessary. The implementation of it determines whether or not it gets my thumbs up. The devil is in the details.
 
Well, it makes sense to explore this technology as we are at the limits of what can be dissipated heat wise given the small surface area of the die's and the heat spreaders.
 
Dan_D said:
Well, it makes sense to explore this technology as we are at the limits of what can be dissipated heat wise given the small surface area of the die's and the heat spreaders.
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I think the next phase of cooling will be to inject carbon tubes through the CPU die and channel heat direct into the heat spreader. But that's just a guess based on reading.
 
Active sub-ambient cooling of some sort is probably the next best way to increase the available thermal envelope for ICs.
 
Brian_B said:
Active sub-ambient cooling of some sort is probably the next best way to increase the available thermal envelope for ICs.
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It needs to be efficient. I don't care if they want me to plug a mini fridge in that has a separate radiator built in that chills down to 50 degrees f that's running through a radiator loop or what. But I'll probably be a ways off of putting it in my setup.
 
Grimlakin said:
It needs to be efficient. I don't care if they want me to plug a mini fridge in that has a separate radiator built in that chills down to 50 degrees f that's running through a radiator loop or what. But I'll probably be a ways off of putting it in my setup.
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I'm open to going extreme.

I just don't want to sit in a noisy room that's a billion degrees due to all the heat coming off the desktop.

We are getting closer and closer to where running a coolant loop to another room (Garage? Basement?) where an external cooling solution is located, is seeming more and more appealing.
 
I messed with pelts back in the day. I always wanted to do a chiller setup.
 
Zarathustra said:
I'm open to going extreme.

I just don't want to sit in a noisy room that's a billion degrees due to all the heat coming off the desktop.

We are getting closer and closer to where running a coolant loop to another room (Garage? Basement?) where an external cooling solution is located, is seeming more and more appealing.
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Well the only way to prevent that, no matter what cooling solution, would be external cooling. Maybe not necessarily a coolant loop running though multiple rooms or floors, but more like a window or portable AC unit that dumps the excess heat out a window would be the most likely solution.
 
LeRoy_Blanchard said:
Maybe not necessarily a coolant loop running though multiple rooms or floors, but more like a window or portable AC unit that dumps the excess heat out a window would be the most likely solution.
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I already need this... no peltier required!

I'm also pretty skeptical. The cooling requirements of the whole system under load are probably an order of magnitude higher between CPU and GPU. Putting a peltier in a water block, for example, wouldn't be that great of a feat, but as Z has already said, you'd want a pretty solid control circuit on that to keep it from freezing stuff in a typical setup.

A 'runaway' pelt setup could easily boil water or cool something in the socket to the point of breaking under pressure, assuming that it were placed directly on top of a die, underneath the water block. It'd have to run upon system startup and it'd have to respond to changes in system load (or just die temperature) fairly quickly.

And the power supply to it needs to be able to handle it all.

Pelts are effective and space-efficient, but they're also dangerous to the point that I'm not sure I'd want to chance messing with them myself!
 
Zarathustra said:
I'm open to going extreme.

I just don't want to sit in a noisy room that's a billion degrees due to all the heat coming off the desktop.

We are getting closer and closer to where running a coolant loop to another room (Garage? Basement?) where an external cooling solution is located, is seeming more and more appealing.
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100+ foot geothermal loop buried below or adjacent to the basement?
 
Zarathustra said:
I'm open to going extreme.

I just don't want to sit in a noisy room that's a billion degrees due to all the heat coming off the desktop.

We are getting closer and closer to where running a coolant loop to another room (Garage? Basement?) where an external cooling solution is located, is seeming more and more appealing.
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I take it you don't remember pool boy.
 
Sure if you want to sit on a thermonuclear reactor. CPU generates 200W the peltier device takes that up to 500W so in the end you need to dissipate 500W of heat. Not to mention the power consumption. We all knew peltier devices work, they are just too impractical.
 
MadMummy76 said:
Sure if you want to sit on a thermonuclear reactor. CPU generates 200W the peltier device takes that up to 500W so in the end you need to dissipate 500W of heat. Not to mention the power consumption. We all knew peltier devices work, they are just too impractical.
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I use them on my fish tanks rather than the intank heaters.
 
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