One of the big down-sides to computing is that things keep changing. There is always a new air cooler or water cooler that has just came out offering better cooling performance than the last. Watercooling can even be worse than air cooling with the urge to buy more and more radiators to bring your temps down fractionally. What this all means is that spending $1000 on watercooling today should buy you a cooling system that will provide you with lowest temps possible. However in a year’s time you’ll need to be upgrading everything to provide the best possible temps.

To be honest, I can’t bring my self to spend huge money on a water cooling system to bring my CPU temps down degrees 5°C over a $130 dollar air cooler. It just doesn’t make sense...

These reasons keep bringing me back to TEC / Peltier cooling. If you TEC cool your PC properly, you could set a target temp to run your CPU at say 20°C and be done with it. If done properly it wouldn’t matter if a new water block comes out or if you change your CPU from a 100 watt version to a 120 watt one, as your TEC system will keep your CPU running at 20°C .. By improving your components, you would only save some electricity. I also love the idea of running my CPU at 20°C so it’s NO debate when it comes to discussions forums about whose system’s best. You’ll have all these guys saying my Air/Water cooled systems cooling my CPU to 40 degrees and they be fighting over 1 or 2 degrees. Where as I can go my CPU runs at 20 degrees no matter the load and no matter the weather.

TECs have become unfashionable for some years now because people say they are too inefficient to be bothered with. This statement is true when only using one TEC to cool a load .. The days of using one TEC to cool a CPU efficiently have passed years ago. To efficiently cool a 150watt load you need multiple TECs.

Here’s an example of how inefficient one TEC can be these days:
Swiftech’s MCW6500-T which runs a single 226watt TEC. At 13.8 volts it’s drawing 396watts of electricity and can only cool a 150watt load to the same temperature as not have the MCW6500-T at all !!

However if multiple TECs had been used a lower temp while using less electricity could have been achieved and here a link to find out how Multiple TECs.