Cold Plates a MUST with TEC ??

[jtroutma]

I have heard about many OCers using cold plates in conjunction with their TEC setups.

Will a cold plate work that much better than simply squishing the TEC between the CPU core and a waterblock?
(granted it works better if the size of the TEC and CPU core are almost identical)

On the smae note, what about a TEC directly on top of the NorthBridge chipset of a MB with a water block on top of that?

I know that the more pressure you use between the chip/plate and the TEC = better results. Just wondering if it is possible to avoid the cold plate on one setup (TEC chipset cooling) than another (TEC CPU cooling).

What has been your experience...


(I also know about protecting setup from condensation as well

[futRtrubL]

The reason a cold plate is mouch better is that the cold face of the tec isn't very conductive. Now we can think of a tec as an array of arround 100 little fans. Fans work by creating a pressure gradient that moves air. Plop something solid infront of or behind the fan and it stops moving air. Using the same anology you can think of a cold plate as a duct. With no duct only the fans on the heat source will draw heat, add a duct and all the fans do useful work.

Edward

[hielko]

Besides that: a coldplate works also as energy buffer preveting extreme fast temp changes on the cpu.

[Butcher]

Also the pressure thing should not be ignored, you want about 200psi for a TEC and about a tenth of that for a cpu / northbridge...

[jtroutma]

ahhh...

Ok then how thick of a cold plate would be ideal for say a 50W Pelter?

Also, is it necessary for a "hot" plate to be on the hot side of a TEC (eg. between the TEC hot side and a copper waterblock? (wouldn't think soo but....)

Thanks for the analogies and the tips.

[Mbeach]

No no... you don't need a hotplate!!

For my 71W pelt i've tried three different coldplates: 1mm, 4mm and 6mm.
I got the most stable temps with the 6mm, but the 4mm wasn't that bad at all so prolly you should go for that. I've also heard some ppl using more than 10mm, but that's overkill imo. A 4mm would be my choice with a 50W pelt.

[imagex]

i use a 1/4 inch 2x3 inch cold plate that works great, it realy smooths out the temps. i clamp my plet with the same force as my cold plate to cpu and it works fine? 200 foot pounds? i use 17. http://www.geocities.com/jamestune_2000/coldstuff.html

[Butcher]

For thickness it's normally a tradeoff between weight and thickness, particularly with copper, the best coldplate material (unless you can afford silver). In theory the thicker the better but diminishing returns starts to kick in badly above 8-10 mm.

As for hotplates, you don;t need them because your waterblock is bigger than the peltier (right?), whereas you need a coldplate because your cpu (or gfx etc.) slug is small.

As for clamping force, yes they do work without, but if you check OnDaEdg's article on the main page he got a significant improvement from using proper clamping force.

[jtroutma]

Alright then.

WEll even though i really didnt want to get started with TECs right now, It looks as though I need to get a small one and get my chipset chilled down so I can rally get this TBird running faster.

My next order is for a chipset waterblock, 36W pelter, and a couple tubes of Artic Silver II (was just using generic RadioShack goop before....opps) OH and a new PSU (POC Sparkle 350W keeps giving me problems; sometimes when i turn it off, it wont come back on again for hours)

I will let you guys know what happens and post my results when i finally get them (say a few weeks or so; getting kinda broke

[jastrckl]

please tell me that this:
1.2Ghz T-bird @ 1.481Ghz
is NOT the chip you plan on using a 50W pelt on? That particular processor dissipates well over 50W... more into the neighborhood of 70W or so. It'll take at least a 156W to experience any notable gains. At a 50W pelt on a 70W chip, you have a net processor heater, pretty basic stuff really.

[jtroutma]

hahhahhaaha


50W pelter on my 1.481 T-bird; how should I put this.....NO WAY IN HELL

Notice the heading to this thread is "Chipset Cooling.." so obviously I am going to put a 36W pelter on my Northbridge CHIPSET and watercool that.

BTW according to some calulations I did, my T-brid @1.481Ghz is putting out around 97W of heat (have yet to do vmod on my KT7A to get 2+ volts.