hks85

im about to rebuild my system with quad core. i really dont want to hear people say stuff about getting a Q6600 im considering it but thats not what im asking here.

9500 OCed to its limit. watercooling will have a 2x2 rad in reference to 120mm fans so a little over 240mm x 240mm radiator. cant remember the pump or block right now. anyway i was considering a TEC to go with the setup but im not sure how much power something like this would take. Im an avid OCer, not looking to make a world record but i would like to push just below or with around the point of "voltage leak" where OCing efficiency goes wayyy down. I cant remember what its called but i help you know what im talking about...

how do you reference a TECs power in terms of wats to the watts of a processor? do you just take processor volts time amps = watts and make sure its less then the TEC? does the watt number of the TEC reference the cooling capacity asside from loss of efficiency or is that total power draw? thanks.

Ultrasonic2 (muffy)

Good to see your sticking with AMD .. i wouldn't buy intel CPU's too
I guess before we say to much we need to know what the max heat will be being generated by your overclocked quad core and what temp you want to run it at

The number quoted on a TEC (Qmax) is normally the max amount of heat moved by the TEC at a given hotside temp. So a 172watt TEC can move 172watts of heat form one side of the TEC to the other. Though at this load both sides of TEC should be the same temp. Which makes having a TEC point less especially when you add in the effects of hotside and cold side C/W/s

You want a TEC with a Qmax of at least twice that of the heat your trying to move. i personally wouldn't use a TEC that was anything less than 3 to 4 times , Though this if for electrical efficiency more than anything else.

Electricity used is NOT a simple equation. A TEC running at a low voltage relative to Umax (Max volts at a given hotside temp) can move more watts of heat than electricity used. Where as the same TEC running at Umax will use more than twice the wattage of the rated Qmax in electricity all of which needs to be cooled by your radiators

RonindeBeatrice

A TEC is rated at the maximum wattage that it can handle. Processors are listed with their TDP nowadays, that number defines the minimum that a cooler must dissipate in order to keep the processor working properly. For example if you take a 95W TDP Phenom and overclock it, you can bet that its new TDP will be closer to 160-ish. So you'll want a TEC with at least that much power. You should also know that a TEC will work much less efficiently the closer you operate it near its peak, so you're better off getting a much more powerful TEC and running it under spec.

It must be mentioned though, that there is not a lot of extreme cooling data available for the Phenoms yet, and they may very well be "cold-bugged" or unable to boot/run properly at super cool temperatures. You might get everything up and running only to realize that your CPU doesn't like the cold (This is the case with many opterons).

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