Imagine paying $350 plus electricity costs for a power-hungry cooler just to overclock an inefficient mid-range processor up near the stock performance of a competing processor lineup. : 3
Enthusiast products like these are kind of in an awkward position now that AMD's latest processors tend to be all-around faster than Intel's while generating substantially less heat. Maybe Rocket Lake will bring Intel back into the lead and benefit from something like this though. But if this cooler isn't compatible with the socket Intel will be moving to a year or so from now, that doesn't seem like a particularly good investment.
And while these peltier liquid coolers might be able to move heat away from the processor die more effectively, that heat is still going into the loop's water, combined with significantly more heat being produced by the cooler itself. So, the radiator is effectively going to be tasked with dissipating around twice as much heat. I would expect the liquid temperatures to get quite high before stabilizing, and the fans to get relatively audible trying to get rid of all that heat. And of course, that additional heat is in turn getting pumped out of the radiator and into one's room.
https://www.omnicalculator.com/everyday-life/electricity-cost
If you're were folding and running full tilt 24-7, would be about $200 a year where I live.
A simple rule of thumb is that at the average cost of electricity in the US (currently around 13 cents per kwh), each watt will cost a little over a dollar a year (around $1.10 or so) if left running 24/7. So, something drawing 200 watts constantly could draw around $220 a year at that rate, and potentially significantly more in some regions with high electricity costs.
I don't suspect the cooler will be drawing 200 watts all the time in the vast majority of usage scenarios though, and I wouldn't be surprised if the peltier device gets shut off entirely at idle to avoid reaching below-ambient temperatures that could potentially cause condensation. But if the CPU were under load for several hours a day, I could see the cooler drawing around $50 worth of electricity over the course of a year, again at the the average cost of electricity in the US. Combined with the price of the unit, and its questionable compatibility with future hardware, that still seems rather expensive though. And of course, the additional heat getting generated by the cooler could result in increased air conditioning costs and/or uncomfortable room temperatures in the summer.
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