All in one watercooler for use with a TEC

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Is the one I mentioned decent?

  • yes

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • no

    Votes: 6 100.0%
  • Total voters
    6
elpresidente2075

elpresidente2075

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May 29, 2006
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Hello all.

Since I'm new to watercooling's specifics, I am wanting some advice on an all in one solution for watercooling my rig.

I have found the Thermaltake CL-W0065\ watercooler kit on newegg, and I was wondering what the people here thought of it. I will be putting a high wattage TEC between it and the proc. I was trying to stay under 100 bucks, and for 60 atm, it seems a good deal.

What I was wondering is: what should I look out for in this kind of cooler? Is it going to underperform compared to what I want? Whats up with this model?

Thanks in advance for any help!
 
What makes it a waste of time? It gets pretty good reviews on newegg. Is it just too small? Does it wear out fast? Does it not flow enough water? Seriously, I'm new to water cooling, so I'm not sure what to look for to discern a good system.
 
without getting into a great amount of detail.
you need a very efficient cooler to remove the heat produced using TEC
depending on the wattage of the TEC you may end up boiling water for tea with that thermaltake. :wink:
 
Is that because it doesn't flow enough water/air through the cooling system? Or is it the design of the water block?

I'm just trying to learn here...
Click to expand...

Let's say your TEC is rated at 100 watts (just for simplicity). If it is a typical TEC, that means it will run in the 10 to 25% efficiency range. Therefore, it will put out 400 to 1000 watts. Bump this up to a 180 watt TEC and you'll need your water loop to remove on the order of 700 to 1800 watts. I once talked to TT about their WC kits and I don't remember the spec on the unit you are considering, but I'd be surprised if it could handle even 250 watts.

Another thing, remember that the cool side temp of a TEC is dependant on the temp you cool the hot side to. So your WC loop can limit the performance of your TEC. You'll find loads of TEC/WC advise here and elsewhere and I recommend digging deep into it before buying. I've watched people screw up bad with TEC rigs and took my lumps along the way too.
 
Thanks guys for all the help. I've decided just to get a heavy duty air cooler instead.Thank you for helping me understand what it takes to have a decent water cooler, I'll use that knowledge in the future when I get a system like that.
 
I recently got a gigabyte WCing system and even though the pump only runs at 400 l/hr I seem to get good cooling for my proc and video card would it increase a lot with a better pump? My temps are 27c idle and 36c load with my x2 4800 running at 2.8, those temps are with my vid card also hooked up to the same system at a temp of 46c ( 1900xtx@735/855) under load. My radiator fan speed is at the lowest it can go, increasing it only lowers the temps about 2c but I prefer the silence.
 
Let's say your TEC is rated at 100 watts (just for simplicity). If it is a typical TEC, that means it will run in the 10 to 25% efficiency range. Therefore, it will put out 400 to 1000 watts.
Click to expand...
TECs dont work that way. They only draw power they dont have "efficiency", if you have a 175W TEC on a 65W CPU, 240W is all you have to cool down. And even for this triple 120mm radiators arent enough sometimes.
 
Let's say your TEC is rated at 100 watts (just for simplicity). If it is a typical TEC, that means it will run in the 10 to 25% efficiency range. Therefore, it will put out 400 to 1000 watts.
Click to expand...
TECs dont work that way. They only draw power they dont have "efficiency", if you have a 175W TEC on a 65W CPU, 240W is all you have to cool down. And even for this triple 120mm radiators arent enough sometimes.
That may be true but lets say there is a 50% overclock and Vcore increase to maintain this oc.
now that 65 watt cpu could double and your 175 watt tec is producing 305 watts of heat on the hot side of the tec .
air is not going to cool that tec. and liquid cooling has to be very efficient to remove 300 + watts of heat.
In the world of overclocking there is no such thing as a 65 watt cpu 8)
 
Let's say your TEC is rated at 100 watts (just for simplicity). If it is a typical TEC, that means it will run in the 10 to 25% efficiency range. Therefore, it will put out 400 to 1000 watts.
Click to expand...
TECs dont work that way. They only draw power they dont have "efficiency", if you have a 175W TEC on a 65W CPU, 240W is all you have to cool down. And even for this triple 120mm radiators arent enough sometimes.

You've probably seen this before, but check out this article. In particular, the following quote gets to my point:

"A TEC like the Silverprop one, running at full power and sucking 8.5 amps at 16 volts, is consuming 136 watts of electrical power. If it's also moving its full rating of 80 watts from the load it's stuck to, that's 216 watts of heat that'll show up on the hot side."

People in the TEC industry have commonly used a situation like this to calculate an efficiency of 80/216 or 37%. Well, the first TECs we bought were ~200 watt units and they did not supply the delta Ts we needed, so we put our heat source in a calorimeter to see if the spec we had on it was right. It was high by about 5%. So we did a load ramp with the TEC in place and it measured in the range of 10 to 20% efficient. Eventually, we found lower load TECs that would run around 30% and made a copper plate so we could run them in parallel. I've bought TECs rated in the 35% range only to measure them at about half that. The calorimeters used were world class quality, properly calibrated, run by experts, etc.
 
People in the TEC industry have commonly used a situation like this to calculate an efficiency of 80/216 or 37%
Click to expand...
Then the lower the efficiency the better!
The wider the gap between the rated pelt and the heat source the cooler it will be. If you put a 80W TEC on a 80W source the pelt will do NOTHING as the TEC cooling power will be zero.
The problem with these is that if you pick a very highly rated TEC and dont cool it down properly the hot side will cool the cold side and a before you know it youll have toasted C2D for dinner.
 
People in the TEC industry have commonly used a situation like this to calculate an efficiency of 80/216 or 37%
Click to expand...
Then the lower the efficiency the better!
The wider the gap between the rated pelt and the heat source the cooler it will be. If you put a 80W TEC on a 80W source the pelt will do NOTHING as the TEC cooling power will be zero.
The problem with these is that if you pick a very highly rated TEC and dont cool it down properly the hot side will cool the cold side and a before you know it youll have toasted C2D for dinner.

Ergh, no. 80 watts removed from the CPU yields 216 watts into the environment. Lower the efficiency and you still get high heat into the environment - but you get less heat extracted from the CPU. The efficiency I'm talking about is a function of the TEC itself (all are not created equally and their efficiencies vary widely). I'm not using efficiency to address proper load matching.

I never advocated not cooling the TEC properly. As I said in my first post to this thread:

"Another thing, remember that the cool side temp of a TEC is dependant on the temp you cool the hot side to. So your WC loop can limit the performance of your TEC."
 
80 watts removed from the CPU yields 216 watts into the environment.
Click to expand...
On a 176W thermoelectric module and if by environment you mean hot side, yes.

The efficiency I'm talking about is a function of the TEC itself (all are not created equally and their efficiencies vary widely). I'm not using efficiency to address proper load matching.
Click to expand...
Well everyone knows TECs are the kings of efficiency, by the time you can get subzero temps in TECs you could have a very cheap home made phase change unit...
 
80 watts removed from the CPU yields 216 watts into the environment.
Click to expand...
On a 176W thermoelectric module and if by environment you mean hot side, yes.

The efficiency I'm talking about is a function of the TEC itself (all are not created equally and their efficiencies vary widely). I'm not using efficiency to address proper load matching.
Click to expand...
Well everyone knows TECs are the kings of efficiency, by the time you can get subzero temps in TECs you could have a very cheap home made phase change unit...

My personal history with TECs is mixed. I think of them as possibly being an "easy solution" for that spot that needs to be cooled. Of course, then you still have to deal with all that heat. Our first attempts were with some Korean junk that died unexpectedly and killed a very expensive light source at precisely the wrong time. Such is life. But there's no doubt in my mind that phase is the way I'd go if I wanted to get a CPU to low temps. Thing is, I'm not motivated to be a competitive overclocker on that scale. And I don't really enjoy LN2 as a coolant having done that for decades on the job where if you screw up you kill a device and again that tends to happen at the worst possible time. I could use a step up in speed for some apps I do but plan to just wait a bit and upgrade eventually. It's not like my Opty at 2.7 is a total dog.

Ramble/off
 
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