The Heatsink Guide - Peltier Cooler Information

The Heatsink Guide - Peltier cooler information
THE HEATSINK GUIDE: Peltier Guide, Part 1

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History and introduction

In 1821, J. T. Seebeck (1770-1831) discovered that dissimilar metals that are connected at two different locations (junctions) will develop a micro-voltage if the two junctions are held at different temperatures. This effect is known as the "Seebeck effect"; it is the basis for thermocouple thermometers. In 1834, a scientist called Peltier discovered the inverse of the Seebeck effect, now known as the "Peltier effect": He found that if you take a thermocouple and apply a voltage, this causes a temperature difference between the junctions. This results in a small heat pump, later referred to as also known as a thermo-electric cooler (TEC). Practical TECs use several thermocouples in series, which allows a substantial amount of heat transfer. A combination of the semiconductors Bismuth and Telluride is most commonly used for the thermocouples; the semiconductors are heavily doped, which means that additional impurities are added to either create an excess (Ntype semiconductor), or a lack (P-type semiconductor) of free electrons. The thermocouples in TECs are made of of N-type and P-type semiconductor pieces bonded together. Since peltier elements are active heat pumps, they can be used to cool components below ambient temperature which is not possible using conventional cooling, or even heat pipes.
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What is a peltier cooler?

A peltier cooler is a cooler that uses a peltier element (TEC). Peltier coolers consist of the peltier element itself, and a powerful heatsink/fan combination to cool the TEC.
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Peltier basics
The typical maximum temperature difference between the hot side and the cold side of a TEC, referred to as delta Tmax, is around 70C. Does this mean that simply adding a peltier element between heatsink and heat source will cause the temperature of the cooled device to drop by 70C? No, that would be too good to be true. Two important factors must be considered: The specified maximum value of delta T only occurs when the peltier element does not transport any heat - a situation that does not occur in real-life cooling solutions. The actual delta T is a linear function of the power transferred through the thermal element, with negative slope. An example of such a function, for one particular TEC, is illustrated in the following graph, which is a stripped-down version of the graph found in part 2 of the Peltier Guide.
Looking at the graph, you can see that, for example, if the peltier element will have a delta T of 55C if it has to move 10W of power (in the form of heat). You will also see that at one point - at 40 Watts in the case of this example - delta T becomes zero. This occurs when the TEC has reached its maximum thermal transfer capability (Q max ). So, our example peltier element cannot transport more than 40W. I admit that this graph is a bit oversimplified; in following parts of the Peltier Guide we will get into more detail.
http://www.heatsink-guide.com/peltier.htm[21/11/2012 1:24:13 p.m.]
The Heatsink Guide - Peltier cooler information
Imagine that you are cooling a CPU with a power usage of 35W, using a conventional heatsink. Will the temperature drop if you add our example peltier element between CPU and heatsink? No. For a simple reason: In addition to transporting heat, peltier elements also emit considerable amounts of heat (and thus use considerable amounts of electricity). So, the heatsink will have to dissipate substantially more heat than before, and will get much hotter. We will get into more detail about this issue in Part 3 of the Peltier Guide, where we analyze under which circumstances a peltier element is useful, and under which conditions you are better off with just a conventional heatsink. Peltier elements have very low efficiency. They will consume more power than they transport! Actual peltier elements may consume twice as much energy (in the form of electricity) as they transport (in the form of heat). So, if you are using a peltier element, the heatsink it is used with must be much more powerful than a heatsink used for cooling a heat source without peltier element. Do not confuse the maximum amount of power a peltier element can transport with the maximum amount of power usage of the peltier element. Some retailers sell "80W peltier element", without stating what this value actually means. This is misleading - what you want is a high transport capability, but a low power consumption. To help you decide what kind of peltier element you need for an overclocked CPU, you can find instructions for estimating power usage of overclocked CPUs here on The Heatsink Guide.
A quick look at typical peltier elements
Typical 40x40mm Peltier element This is a "padded" TEC Peltier elements come in various forms and shapes. Typically, they consist of a larger amount (e.g. 127) of thermocouples arranged in rectangular form, and packaged between two thin ceramic plates. Multi-stage modules, to reach higher delta T values, are also available, but less common. The commercial TEC unit of interest for PC geeks is a single stage device, about 4 - 6 mm thick and somewhere from 15 to 40 mm on a side. The TEC will have two wires coming out of it, if a voltage is applied to those wires, then a temperature difference across the two sides is achieved, if the polarity is reversed on the wires - then the temperature difference is also reversed. The TEC is placed in between the CPU/GPU and the heatsink with appropriate thermal interface materials (thermal grease). So one thing we might note is that if the voltage is applied in the wrong direction then the TEC will cool your heatsink and heat your CPU! Peltier elements come in padded and non-padded versions. On non-padded peltiers, the thermocouples are visible from the side. On padded peltier elements, you can only see the padding material (often silicon) from the side.
Problems related to peltier cooling

As mentioned above, high power usage and high power dissipation are the biggest problems related to peltier cooling. In the days of first-generation Pentium CPUs, readymade peltier/heatsink combinations were widely available, which could be installed and used just like a regular heatsink. For today's CPUs having a power dissipation of over 100W, building a Peltier CPU cooler using just a peltier element and a heatsink is quite a challenge, and ready-made peltier coolers are scarce and expensive. With such coolers, over 200W of heat may be dissipated inside the case. For modern CPUs, it is better to combine peltier elements with watercooling. In any case, the resulting cooling system will be expensive to run, due to its high power usage, and not very eco-friendly. The large power dissipation will require powerful (and thus loud) fans. Also, keep in mind that if the cooling of the peltier element fails (e.g. fan failure or pump failure in case of watercooling), the results will be more disasterous that if a conventional cooling system fails. Even if your CPU has a thermal protection that will cause it to shut down if the temperature gets too high, the peltier element may still kill it by continueing to heat it up long after it has shut itself down. Another problem related to peltier cooling is condensation. Since it is possible to cool components below ambient temperature using peltier elements, condensation may occur, which is something you'll definitely want to avoid water and electronics don't mix well. The exact temperature at which condensation occurs depends on ambient temperature and on air humidity; we will look at this in more detail in part 3 of the Peltier Guide.
Advantage of peltier elements

After having focused on problems related to Peltier cooling, let's not forget about their biggest advantage: They allow cooling below ambient temperature, but unlike other cooling systems that allow this (vapor phase refrigeration), they are less expensive and more compact. Peltier elements are solid-state devices with no moving parts; they are extremely reliable and do not require any maintainance.
http://www.heatsink-guide.com/peltier.htm[21/11/2012 1:24:13 p.m.]
The Heatsink Guide - All about PC cooling
THE HEATSINK GUIDE: Peltier Guide, part 2
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Getting into the details

The second part of the Peltier Guide deals specifically with sizing peltiers and heatsinks, to fit a given application. Hopefully it will also show some of the problems in more detail, and help you judge about merits and tradeoffs when using peltiers. The fact that you are still reading, and weren't scared off by the first part, shows that you have a keen interest in peltier cooling. If you are more interested in general information about Peltier elements, or in in-depth information about the theory behind them, you should definitely have a look at Melcor's excellent Thermoelectric Engineering Handbook. This article here mainly focuses on how to apply peltier cooling to PC processors or graphics chips; it is not as general as the information you can find on the websites of Peltier manufacturers. First, a word of warning: Read the disclaimer before proceeding. If you damage something while following the instructions here, I cannot be held responsible. Do not supply power to a peltier element without a heatsink, after a while it will overheat and the connectors will melt. In the last part of the guide, you will find an Excel spreadsheet with VBA code that will help you with the necessary calculations for designing a peltier-based cooling system for your PC, but I ask you to please read the article first before you download the spreadsheet.
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One thing we must consider is that a thermocouple will always be a thermocouple - and thus when you apply a voltage and get a temperature difference - you will also cause a back voltage created by the Seebeck effect. This is very similar to the back EMF created within an electric motor - and thus much like motors TECs show a negative linear load dependent output curve. The other thing that happens when a voltage is applied across the TEC unit is that current flows through the TEC. This causes internal heating through I2R losses. This is a very important fact because this imposes a lot more heat on the heatsink to cool - we will get to that later. A performance curve from Tellurex is shown here at the left. This, by the way, is the same curve that Joe over at overclockers.com shows in one of his articles. The curve shows heat pumped versus temperature difference achieved across the peltier for 3 different current inputs. I find this plot not particularly easy to read. The main problem I have is that the information is presented at constant current, whereas PC freaks are likely to have a constant voltage source available. The other thing that is not shown is the power generation from the TEC itself - you can however glean this information from the voltage and current. I have rearranged the same information into another chart I find more usable.
file:///C|/Temp/The%20Heatsink%20Guide%20-%20All%20about%20PC%20cooling2.htm[22/11/2012 5:31:24 p.m.]
This chart shows the same TEC as above - but only at 12 volts. The left-hand vertical axis is for both temperature difference (C) and also for total power to heatsink (watts). The right-hand vertical axis is for current(amps). The first thing you'll notice is that the independent axis is power transferred (CPU power). The next thing you might notice about this format is that you can immediately see the amount of power transferred to the heatsink as a function of the amount of power transmitted by the TEC. For example at 15 watts of heat transfer across the peltier element another almost 30 watts of heat is added by I2R losses to make nearly 45 watts transferred to the heatsink. This illustrates that TEC applications add a lot of "overhead" heat to the total system, as it was already pointed out in the first part of this guide.
Go to part 3 of the Peltier Guide (or return to part 1)

Note: This article was originally written by "Bo", a visitor of The Heatsink Guide, who wishes to remain anonymous, and only slightly modified by me. Thank you Bo for sharing this article with us!
All pages copyright 1997-2010 Tillmann Steinbrecher Legal information / Disclaimer / Impressum
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Variables that affect TEC performance

Another thing that is important to realize is that TECs are affected by voltage and temperature. I refer to the Melcor site as a place to read up on how to calculate TEC performance based upon voltage, absolute temperature of the TEC, the number of thermocouples in the TEC, and something described as the geometric factor. I won't bother to rewrite all of those relationships - here is the link if you are interested. You might be saying to yourself, "Dude - the manufacturer gives you that information - why bother?". Well, the fact is that TEC performance is very sensitive to temperatur; the curve you get from the manufacturer might be for constant hot side temp of 50C - your hot side temperature might be a lot different, your voltage might be different and QMax and DT Max are all tied up in that. The plot shown to the right is for a TEC with QMax = 72 watts @ 20C hotside. It shows the solved cold side temperature difference versus ambient using a 33 watt load (CPU heat), and a heatsink resistance of R Heatsink of 0.5 C/W (see the heatsink information section for details about heatsink performance measurements). The only variable is ambient temperature (ranging from 20C to 60C). This shows that your TEC works better when it is hotter, but moreover the total system performance changes by 8C relative to ambient over the 40C span! The temperature is important because it affects the Seebeck coefficient electrical resistivity of the thermocouples as well as the thermal conductivity of the substrate. The voltage obviously is important because it affects the enforced temperature difference. Two parameters we haven't looked at until now is the maximum allowed electrical current Imax through the device (exceeding the current will damage the TEC), and the geometry factor G. The number of thermocouples and the geometry factor help to describe the size of the device - more thermocouples means more pathways to pump heat - the geometry factor is not explained by Melcor. They offer the factor (G) for their devices - but that doesn't help when trying to calculate performance for another manufacturer's TEC. One thing I did observe about G is that it is related to the density of thermocouples per square area and it is also related to the thickness of the TEC. After looking at the Melcor data I finally discovered that G = Imax /50. It is a perfect match for every Melcor TEC. When I went to make the above plot for the Tellurex TEC (using the Melcor relations), I had to play with G a little to get the right curve - 3.9/50 = 0.078 , but I found that G = 0.084 was about right to match the Tellurex chart. This "empirical" determination of the geometry factor G is clearly a a hack - but it is all I have - if anyone knows the calculation of G more specifically please email me. Melcor has a downloadable program called Aztec that can handle all this for you automatically, but I didn't like the choices of independent versus dependent variables they used. As it turns out I am trying to calculate hot side temp and cold side temp - not continually guess at what they might be - but hey - Aztec works and it's free. The other obvious problem is that it is only for Melcor TECs (but other TEC manufacturers, such as KryoTherm, offer similar software for download as well). Thus I went to the Melcor information page and spent some looking over their equations trying to come up with a few quick rules of thumb. I finally realized that the sensible thing to do was to implement their equations into a few custom Excel VBA functions. These functions are the basis for all of the plots shown in this article - details follow later. One final note - I used the Melcor supplied values for the Seebeck coefficient, resistivity and thermal conductivity - all of this applies to Bismuth-Telluride TECs only! For another TEC flavour we would need to adapt those values - but Bismuth-Telluride is the only material commonly
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used for TECs that are suitable for temperature ranges common in electronics cooling.
System Integration of TEC with CPU and Heatsink

We should know the following: CPU (or graphics chip) power output, heatsink thermal resistance, TEC parameters, ambient temperature. That is all we need. If we don't know the CPU or GPU power output - then we look on the web, manufactures publish it. A very good page where you can find processor electrical specifications of all common CPUs is Chris Hare's Processor Electrical Specification page. Getting your heatsink's thermal resistance could be tricky - some manufacturers specify the thermal resistance of their heatsinks, but the values are often not very precise, or "optimized" for marketing purposes. Check out the heatsink information page for more information on thermal resistance, and how to calculate it. You must know your TEC parameters, at the very least QMax and hopefully more. Lets suppose we have the Tellurex TEC curve from above. Also suppose our CPU is at 15 watts (keep in mind that the power usage of current CPUs is much higher!), our heatsink has R Heatsink = 0.5 C/W and ambient temperature is 25C. Here is the most simple method: Interpolate along the TEC curve to the CPU output (15 watts) and find that DT = 45C. Look at the total power output and see that it is about 43 watts to the heatsink. 43 watts*0.5C/W = 21.5C. Thus the heatsink will be 25 + 21.5 = 46.5C. The TEC is enforcing a 45C difference and thus the cold-side temp of the TEC will be 46.5 - 45 = 1.5C. That's pretty cold - good stuff for an overclocker; but you might encounter problems with condensation. See the last part of the Peltier Guide for details about condensation problems. Let us now look at a less favourable example: Suppose your have a poor quality heatsink; suppose RHeatsink is 1.5 C/W - then your heatsink will be 65C over ambient 65+25 = 90C and then your coldside temp would be 45C. What if you didn't use the TEC? Then your CPU would be 15watts * 1.5C/W = 22.5C over ambient or at 47.5C. In that case it is probably is not worth using the TEC because you are dumping 30 extra watts into your case and drawing 3 amps off of your power supply. In the next part, we analyze in more detail in which situations a peltier element will help cooling, and in which situations it won't.
Go to part 4 of the Peltier Guide (or return to part 2)

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Examining the influence of different parameters

Let us now look at the relationships of R Heatsink , QCPU and Qmax in a more general sense. Below, you see a few contour plots. The first thing to consider is: Given a powerful TEC ( Qmax = 75 watts), what kind of CPU temperatures can be expected based upon varying heat load (Q CPU) and varying R Heatsink ? The following two plots are based upon performance for the TEC at 12V.
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This plot shows cold side temp of the TEC for various heat loads and heatsink capabilities. So for example we can see that at QCPU= 33 and R Heatsink = 0.475, the cold side temp is about 28C, or 3C over ambient - not too bad. What about the fact that the TEC is adding heat? We must make sure that we are progressing not regressing! For that I took the same information and compared it to the temperature that would have been achieved at the same CPU load and with the same heatsink but without the TEC. I subtracted the calculated temperature with TEC from the calculated temperature without TEC. Thus, in the next plot, I am showing the advantage of using the TEC. When the numbers are positive, the TEC does improve cooling; when they are negative, the TEC is a disadvantage.
Again, what is plotted here is the advantage of using the TEC versus not using one - for example from the conditions before (Q CPU= 33 and R Heatsink = 0.475) we see that the advantage is about 12.5C. The TEC coldside temp was 28C; using the heatsink alone, we would have reached a temperature difference of 33 watts * 0.475C/W = 15.7C. Add that to 25C = 40.7C, which is 12.5C hotter than the solution with the TEC. I think this kind of plot can be really interesting - it shows us how quickly it can go bad if we use either an undersized TEC or an undersized heatsink. How about TEC voltage? Again plotted against CPU power, same TEC ( QMax = 75 watts) but choosing R Heatsink = 0.5 C/W.
This is quite interesting because it shows two things: First of all there is an optimum voltage - in this case about 10.5 - 11.5 volts, depending upon the power. Second, it shows that you can get away with a much lower voltage and still do some serious cooling. This may be important in the case that your power supply is putting out less than 12 volts due to the extra load of the TEC. Of course, under these circumstances one should consider an alternate power source for the TEC. The last thing I'd like to show is a plot that illustrates how big the TEC and heatsink should be, based upon the power load. I've normalized the CPU power on the TEC Qmax as thus: Normalized Power = QCPU/ Qmax . I also normalized the CPU power on R Heatsink : Normalized Cooling = QCPU*R Heatsink . The purpose of this is that the plot directly tells how big the TEC and heatsink should be based upon the power requirement. The temperature shown is the advantage over using the same heatsink without the TEC.
Coincidentally, the values along the horizontal axis also happen to be the temperature rise over ambient that the heatsink working alone (without TEC) would produce. The temperature contours are again the advantage of using the TEC versus using the same load and heatsink without the TEC. Thus at 0 is is break even - positive numbers (C) indicate that the TEC is helpful, negative numbers indicate that the TEC is heating the CPU. So we can immediately see that if the heatsink alone can not keep the CPU less than 26C over ambient - then under no circumstances will it ever get better when you add a TEC. Furthermore, you should add a 5-10C penalty for the fact that the extra heat inside your case caused by the TEC will work to your disadvantage - thus I'd say that you really need a heatsink (or watercooler) that will keep your CPU no more than 15C -18C above ambient for it to be suitable for applying a Peltier. Now - bear in mind that this is the CPU temp measured at the interface with the heatsink - if you are measuring the temperature of the CPU from the CPU's internal temperature diode, then you may see a higher temperatures than at the heatsink interface. If the CPU load is about equal or greater than the TEC QMax - then even the very best heatsink in the world will not justify using the TEC. Finally, we can see that the optimum size of the TEC is such that the CPU power is 1/3 - 1/2 of QMax . If you have a really good cooler, such as a powerful water cooler, then get a TEC that has QMax = 3 times the CPU heatload. If the heatsink is marginal (15C-18C above ambient without TEC) then go for QMax = 2 times the CPU heat load.
Excel Spreadsheet
As mentioned before, you can download an excel spreadsheet with the the functions I used to create the above plots. As with any computation tool - check to see if the results make sense. Remember that your outputs are only as good as your inputs (garbage in = garbage out). All theory comes from Melcor. Basically there are two user defined functions that may be useful for someone engineering their own peltier cooled assembly. One function (peltier) will calculate the heat transferred across the TEC - this is really only a support function for (cputemp) which will calculate the coldside temp directly. The functions require that you know how many thermocouples are in your TEC and you must also come up with something known as the "Geometry factor". As I mentioned above I found from the Melcor data that G = Imax /50 - but the acid test is to recreate a manufacturer's supplied curve at the specified temperature. After you open up the spreadsheet there is a page sort of akin to a user's manual - and another page to chart the TEC performance. You can access these two functions by inserting a user defined function. I did not protect the VBA stuff so feel free to hack it - but this is my material - please give credit where it is due.
Condensation
As mentioned before, cooling below ambient temperature may result in condensation problems, which is something you'll definitely want to avoid. Using padded peltier elements will prevent condensation inside the TEC, but it won't protect you from condensation on cooled components. Whether condensation occurs, depends on the temperature of the cooled object, on the ambient temperature, and on the air humidity. Here is a table that will give you an indication whether you are risking condensation problems:
Air humidity . /
30% 35% 40% 45% 50% 55% 60% 65% 70% 75% 80% 85% 90% 95%
Air temperature 30 C 29 C 28 C 27 C 26 C 25 C 24 C 23 C 22 C 21 C 20 C 19 C 18 C 17 C 16 C 15 C 14 C 13 C 12 C 11 C 10 C
10,5 9,7 8,8 8,0 7,1 6,2 5,4 4,5 3,6 2,8 1,9 1,0 0,2 -0,6 -1,4 -2,2 -2,9 -3,7 -4,5 -5,2 -6,0
12,9 12,0 11,1 10,2 9,4 8,5 7,6 6,7 5,9 5,0 4,1 3,2 2,3 1,4 0,5 -0,3 -1,0 -1,9 -2,6 -3,4 -4,2
14,9 14,0 13,1 12,2 11,4 10,5 9,6 8,7 7,8 6,9 6,0 5,1 4,2 3,3 2,4 1,5 0,6 -0,1 -1,0 -1,8 -2,6
16,8 15,9 15,0 14,1 13,2 12,2 11,3 10,4 9,5 8,6 7,7 6,8 5,9 5,0 4,1 3,2 2,3 1,3 0,4 -0,4 -1,2
18,4 17,5 16,6 15,7 14,8 13,9 12,9 12,0 11,1 10,2 9,3 8,3 7,4 6,5 5,6 4,7 3,7 2,8 1,9 1,0 0,1
20,0 19,0 18,1 17,2 16,3 15,3 14,4 13,5 12,5 11,6 10,7 9,8 8,8 7,9 7,0 6,1 5,1 4,2 3,2 2,3 1,4
21,4 20,4 19,5 18,6 17,6 16,7 15,8 14,8 13,9 12,9 12,0 11,1 10,1 9,2 8,2 7,3 6,4 5,5 4,5 3,5 2,6
22,7 21,7 20,8 19,9 18,9 18,0 17,0 16,1 15,1 14,2 13,2 12,3 11,3 10,4 9,4 8,5 7,5 6,6 5,7 4,7 3,7
23,9 23,0 22,0 21,1 20,1 19,1 18,2 17,2 16,3 15,3 14,4 13,4 12,5 11,5 10,5 9,6 8,6 7,7 6,7 5,8 4,8
25,1 24,1 23,2 22,2 21,2 20,3 19,3 18,3 17,4 16,4 15,4 14,5 13,5 12,5 11,6 10,6 9,6 8,7 7,7 6,7 5,8
26,2 25,2 24,2 23,3 22,3 21,3 20,3 19,4 18,4 17,4 16,4 15,5 14,5 13,5 12,6 11,6 10,6 9,6 8,7 7,7 6,7
27,2 26,2 25,2 24,3 23,3 22,3 21,3 20,3 19,4 18,4 17,4 16,4 15,4 14,5 13,5 12,5 11,5 10,5 9,6 8,6 7,6
28,2 27,2 26,2 25,2 24,2 23,2 22,3 21,3 20,3 19,3 18,3 17,3 16,3 15,3 14,4 13,4 12,4 11,4 10,4 9,4 8,4
29,1 28,1 27,1 26,1 25,1 24,1 23,1 22,2 21,2 20,2 19,2 18,2 17,2 16,2 15,2 14,2 13,2 12,2 11,2 10,2 9,2
All values are in C. Example for using this table: Ambient temperature=20C, air humidity=65%. Result: Condensation will occur at a surface temperature (CPU, Peltier cooler) of 13.2C Condensation problems can be avoided by properly insulating the cooled components. The better solution is to use a temperature control for your TEC, to avoid temperatures that are so low that condensation becomes a problem. A simple circuitry, like the one presented here on The Heatsink Guide is useful for controlling fan speed, but not for controlling peltier elements, due to their high power usage. Pulse-width modulation can be used for controlling peltier power; this is a rather complex issue, and beyond the scope of this guide.
Summary
In conclusion, TECs are solid state heat pumping devices that can reduce component (CPU) temperatures, but they require some forethought to apply. If the TEC is misapplied, then the unit may actually heat your CPU rather than cool it. The most important thing is that the heatsink and the TEC must be properly sized to suit the heat load. The heatsink must be at least good enough that it will keep the CPU only 15-18C above ambient without the TEC. The TEC must have a maximum heat transfer capability about 2 - 3 times more than the amount of heat that the CPU puts out. Return to part 3 of the Peltier Guide, or return to first part.

The Heatsink Guide - Peltier Cooler Information

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THE HEATSINK GUIDE: Peltier Guide, Part 1

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History and introduction

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What is a peltier cooler?

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