On-CPU Peltiers From AMD?

[Mr5oh]

<A HREF="http://slashdot.org/articles/04/10/24/1723232.shtml?tid=137&tid=142&tid=1" target="_new">http://slashdot.org/articles/04/10/24/1723232.shtml?tid=137&tid=142&tid=1</A>

<A HREF="http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20041022085709.html" target="_new">http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20041022085709.html</A>

"Remember those people who lived on the edge and put peltiers between their CPU and heatsink (or your favorite beverage)? A peltier is a devices that gets cold on one side and warm on the other when an electrical current passes through it. It looks like there is talk that AMD will actually incorporate some of these devices on the CPU according to Xbitlabs. AMD already incorporates some degree of the peltier effect with it's Silicon on Insulator."

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[coylter]

= Cooler chips = higher clockrate = yay

Click <font color=blue><A HREF="http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/you.html" target="_new">HERE</A></font color=blue> if you real<b>l</b>y are an <font color=red>idiot</font color=red>.

 

[scottchen]

Interesting, let's just hope that the stockcooling is efficient enough at cooling the peltier, and not too loud.

 

[Ned_Flanders]

..and if the peltier 'breaks', it turns in to one big resistor, and WHAM, your CPU is gone, as well as your motherboard.

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[c0d1f1ed]

Interesting, let's just hope that the stockcooling is efficient enough at cooling the peltier, and not too loud.

The interesting thing about Peltiers is that a powerful heatsink and fan is not required. As long as the CPU stays at reasonable temperatures, there's no real problem to let the heatsink reach over a hundred degree celsius. They become more effective at transferring heat, the hotter they get. With Peltiers you can even cool passively, no noise at all.

 

[Mephistopheles]

Yes... but as far as I know, the peltier units themselves are not thermally efficient at all. So if you want a temperature difference of a few degrees, you might actually spend only 5-10W, but if you want dozens of degrees, you will need to put a lot more juice into your peltier-enabled chip. So the chip itself might actually dissipate like 150W because of the peltier unit; this won't result in an onverheated CPU because of the peltier unit, however, it will be a room heater... much worse than prescott.

That's according to what I know of peltier units. I could be wrong, though.

But picture this: why don't we use those magnificent TEC cooling units everywhere else? In air conditioning and refrigerators, for instance? It's exactly because they're so inefficient... If they weren't, wouldn't we all love to have noiseless refrigerators in our kitchens, for instance???

So while this might be evolution in cooling, I doubt it will revolutionize cooling altogether. Maybe it will become an extra, because it certainly has the potential to help, but cooling exclusively through TEC is, for instance, not an option. Keeping a temperature difference of many dozens of degrees celsius through TEC is not doable. A few degrees is OK, though.