Nathan Davis is so hardcore, he wears a Peltier of HSF skins.
This unit allays both power and condensation concerns, using 72W of PSU power, and all signs of condensation - to our great surprise - have been eliminated. And all without the use of rubber insulation or grease to seal off the area from open air.
Using an inbuilt microprocessor, it monitors the CPU and ambient temperatures and controls the thermoelectric unit's copper plate temperature by adjusting the voltage supplied to both it and the fan. This is all done automatically, so you cannot exactly change the window where it alters the Peltier effect to keep condensation at bay.
You can, however, change the fan speed. The 5 1/4-inch bay controller allows two fan speeds - 'Cool' and 'Silent'. When set to Cool, the fan continuously spins at its incredible maximum speed of 2500rpm. Silent mode will have the onboard chip monitor the temperatures and decide how fast the fan should be spinning. The noise levels vary, but even on max they are insignificant.
Set to 80W in an ambient room temperature of 23°C, we tested the Socket 478 version on Chernobyl. It returned a decent score of 48°C, and as 80W represents the CPU at 100 percent use, silent mode did not alter this. To give an idea of the performance difference between the two settings, we reduced Chernobyl to 50W. The cool setting gave out 29°C and silent levelled at 33°C.
If you are after a thermoelectric CPU cooling system that works with any measurable degree of goodness, this would be the one. While there are better performing HSFs, finally here is a Peltier cooler we won't be able to mock.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012