Post
Topic
Board Mining (Altcoins)
Re: Peltier Thermo-Electric Cooler ?
by
Atomicat
on 17/10/2014, 06:53:45 UTC
Has anyone tried any Peltier Thermo-Electric Cooling in a rig?
Get those chips nice and frosty  Cheesy

These look interesting

$34
Peltier Thermo-Electric Cooler Module+Heatsink Assembly - 12V 5A
PRODUCT ID: 1335
http://www.adafruit.com/products/1335?gclid=CjwKEAjwk_OhBRD06abu3qSoxlwSJACt7sZ7Va1tbe99RKdXVWfxXx_CUqK_SxlegP6W3D9iA84n_hoCGSPw_wcB
The Peltier Module is 40mm x 40mm / 1.6" x 1.6"
The aluminum plate is 40mm x 60mm / 1.6" x 2.4"
The heat-sink is 90mm x 90mm / 3.5" x 3.5"
The whole assembly is approximately 78mm / 3.1" tall
Wire Length: 280mm / 11"
Weight: 455g

Found some 10 packs on ebay too. kinda cheap $24
http://www.ebay.com/itm/10Pcs-TEC1-12706-Thermoelectric-Cooler-Heat-Sink-Cooling-Peltier-Plate-Module-6A-/361055841312?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item54109aec20

Opinions?


 

If you're intention is to get the chips hashing as fast as possible, ignoring power costs, then a TEC (Thermo electric cooler) plus a massive heatsink (even better a water cooled head on the back of the TEC) is the way to go. You can get the temperature of the chip well below ambient, which means you can get it colder, while still moving heat away just as air or water. Next option is an oil bath, which unless you can get the oil temperature well below ambient, then it can only move the heat but not cool the chip to super lower levels because you can only cool it to ambient; unless of course you refrigerate the oil, or have some cascade of heat pumps.
 You can buy water-cooled TEC plates there!
 Oil cooled pc in a fish tank

If along with electricity you have free time on your hands you could build a ASIC dry ice pot. This is a large thick copper cylinder with one closed and one open end, the closed end sits on top of the chips and into the cylinder you very carefully place acetone and dry ice chunks and make a "slurry" and its super super cold! But you have to feed it dry ice for 24/7 so it doesn't overheat from evaporating the dry ice off. Some people even use liquid nitrogen in the pot.
Good picture of a dry ice pot

If you have a lot of free electricity, time, or money you could buy an entire AC unit for you asics, or build your own. This uses a "head" akin to a water cooling "head" that is placed on the chip, but instead of water, freon or some suitable chemical is ran through it. It is compressed and held at some pressure at a liquid, it is then pumped onto the hot chip, and evaporates taking heat with it, then it is compressed with a compressor and cycled back through. These can get below ambient too.
A phase change system for a computer with one head

The coolest thing you could do if you have a lot of all of that stuff we all want a lot of. Then you could build or buy a thermo-acoustic cooler. This thing is bad-ass, it can get within a few degrees of 0 kelvin, but I don't think it moves much heat at that point. But you could find one suitable for the chips heat output, and not have to feed it dry ice, or freon, or air, or water. It uses sound pressure waves to cool a "stack" of straw like cylinders, it works super well and its super cool. Ben and Jerry's actually started using them in all of their freezers for ice cream and to make it because they are so easy, cheap, environmentally friends, and super cool.
Thermo-acoustic cooler article/link

But way before any of those become useful, i think you'd reach the chips physical limits. I have no idea about your specific hardware, but first run the chips and measure their temperature at increasing clock speeds and voltages, see if cooling is necessary.

Ooooo!  That thermo-acoustic cooler, I believe the technical term is "Cooler 'n' Shit!"  TEC's are basically heat-pumps and harvest too.  I'd like them to get cheap enough so I can run my comp off of my wood-stove.  As for trying them out for cooling, I've got the perfect setup for testing it out and am in the middle of wiring it up.  The problems I've had with it in the past related to how fast the chip can pull the heat off.  Check that heat-sink on the unit, my 8350 wouldn't be comfortable with it.  I'll let the masters give you the numbers though, excellent source for all extreme cooing.

http://www.overclock.net/f/60/specialized-cooling

If your looking at hacking some cheap and very effective cooling though, lemme show you what I'll be trying that chip on.  I got a wicked deal ($22) each on two Thermaltake 2.0 units last fall (wrong firmware, whatever), and I had a couple of smaller ones as well so I just had to put together one nice big grill.  Now if only I can package it in a nice 50's sports-car model.

http://i633.photobucket.com/albums/uu53/acatphoto/Tech/BadGirl02.jpg

http://i633.photobucket.com/albums/uu53/acatphoto/Tech/BG_Detail01.jpg

The numbers.  I'm completely unable to get the 7950 on top there over 65C.  Here's a bench shot of it at 1240/1740.

http://i633.photobucket.com/albums/uu53/acatphoto/Tech/7950-1240-1740-Firestrike.jpg

Easy enough to try a peltier out there.  Here's the thing though, normally these chips are used to cool down what's doing the cooling down.  Like when they're put on the side of a V8 unit, or used to cool the water in a liquid rig.  They just don't pull the heat off fast enough.  However, I will be trying that chip out not on the GPU but on the VRM's.  I had quite the time getting those temps down in this mod.  VRM temps were consistently 15C higher than the gpu until I got that little 2x2 fan array in place.  Now I've just got to figure out how to sandwich a peltier in there.  Hasn't been high priority because it's working really well as is but I'm sure it's a curiosity that I'll scratch eventually.