Thermoelectric CPU Coolers, any better?

Your load temps are fine. Don't waste the money. TEC's are only really good for high OCs, which you aren't going to get out of that chip.

Thanks for the input, Im at 3.12 GHz right now with those temps. I will just wait and get Phenom X4 when it ever releases..

Thermoelectric coolers are generally only used for overclocking due to the fact that they are either off or on and that TECs can get cool enough to cause condensation around the CPU socket area- very bad news. A TEC would work well if you ran a CPU at a steady load all of the time, such as a folding box or a dedicated number cruncher, and then did the math and calculated exactly how big of a TEC would be required to keep the temps above the dew point of the air. But most people have a CPU that has intermittent and widely varying usage, and if you overclock, that makes it even worse as the difference in thermal dissipation between idle and full-load just gets bigger. So a TEC that's small enough to not cause condensation when a chip is at idle may not be able to cool it when it's at full roar, and a TEC that's big enough to cool the chip at full-load may cause condensation or freezing around the socket.

<begin engineering lecture>
There are a few more issues with TECs as well, stemming from how they work. A TEC works via the Peltier principle, where electricity is used to move heat energy from one side of the Peltier block surface to the other. This makes the one side cold and the other side hot. But the problem is that the hot side isn't heated just by the energy transferred by the cold side but also by the energy put into the Peltier block to make this happen. The exact amount of heating the hot side has is the sum of the TEC input wattage plus the thermal dissipation of the CPU. So a TEC will get much hotter on its hot side than it will cold on its cold side. That hot side needs to be cooled, lest the TEC burn up.
</end engineering lecture>

Many people who use TECs simply put the TEC block between the CPU's heat spreader and a water block or a phase-change block as only a small TEC on a relatively efficient CPU will even be able to dissipate the heat with an air cooler. Some smaller TECs like the Titan Amanda do use a big air cooler to dissipate the heat from the hot side of the Peltier block and they prevent condensation by cycling the Peltier on and off to maintain a temperature range, much like a air conditioner in a house. And like an air conditioner, the unit is loud and big and throws off a lot of hot air inside the case.

I'd suggest that you look at water or phase change if air won't meet your needs in overclocking your chip. I've heard that the later 6000+s have maybe 3.3-3.5 GHz in them, so you have to decide whether it's worth it to upgrade your cooling. A 3.15 GHz X2 on a Zalman 9500 is a pretty powerful and low-maintenance setup, while a 3.3-3.5 GHz X2 won't be much faster and water is a real pain in the butt to maintain. I've not personally used phase, but you have what's essentially a refrigerator's condenser coils and compressor sitting next to your computer and I have to imagine that's noisy and a bit awkward. I'd be much happier with a little lower OC on a nice big air cooler; you might too.

There's no point in him doing anything. He has one of the fastest procs he can have with his setup. His tempretures are fine. No sense in spending money.

By the way Spikke, there is no water in a TEC cooler.

http://www.ultraproducts.com/produ [...] h=571&prod uctID=571

The ChillTec looks like a TEC done right, thermostat controlled, with a massive heatpipe air cooler on top of and underneath the TEC. So, at idle the CPU is completely passively cooled, removing risk of condensation and decreasing power draw by 50W. As CPU temp rises the TEC switches on and cools the CPU block, and it is cooled in turn by heat pipes.

TECs have lots of problems like others have said, including condensation, massive power draw, and risk of thermal runaway due to inverse efficiency/temp ratio and large heat production, generally making them unfeasible for CPU cooling use except for a few instances.

That said, if you're going to get a TEC the ChillTec looks like it tries to handle most of these problems. You will still need to get the heat out of your case, so if you do go with this you'll need to add additional case ventilation to handle the additional 50W of heat the TEC adds.

Unless you want an expensive, power-hungry toy, stick with your air cooling until you get your Phenom.

I was talking about the ChillTec TEC coolers. They have a water loop cooled by a TEC.

I meant the CoolIt products, had the company names mixed up, my bad.