r/hardware • u/Durian_Queef • 21h ago
Review This 18-Year-Old TEC Cooler Beat My Noctua Air Cooler | der8auer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NFJNYHoyMY40
u/79215185-1feb-44c6 20h ago
Ambient vs Subambient cooling is basically the definition of clickbait. I wonder how many people upvoting this know that TEC/Peltier cooling is sub-ambient and draws a ton of power.
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u/S_A_N_D_ 19h ago
and draws a ton of power
This is one of the main reasons it's not too common. They're very inefficient devices for cooling. They have some very specific use cases where they're great, but this isn't one of them and it's why they're not common.
Basically the peltier uses electricity so it also generates heat in addition to what it pumps. So you the end result is you need to not only get rid of the heat of the CPU, you also need to get rid of the peltiers generated heat as well. So while you can go subambient, you're generating a lot more heat than the CPU would a on it's own, all of which still needs to be removed.
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u/f3n2x 15h ago
The last time I've read about Peltier cooling was during the Thunderbird days 25 years ago I believe, lol.
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u/Green_Struggle_1815 13h ago
Intel tried to revive it a few years ago under the brand name 'Intel Cryo Cooling'
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u/ILikeFlyingMachines 17h ago
Still impressive. Most TEC coolers don't really work at all for current CPUs
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u/WingedGundark 6h ago
In addition to inefficiency in terms of power draw, they can introduce other kind of problems.
Peltier elements, usually combined with water cooling or phase change coolers (practically a compressor from a fridge attached to a cooling block for CPU) were popular for tinkerers (relatively speaking) in early 2000s during socket A era.
The problem with these is that as the temperatures of cooling elements are below sub ambient and may reach freezing point, you introduce condensation of moisture from the air and even icing. You need to protect your system components, especially near the CPU, from moisture and water. The common method was to use foam and grease to protect the motherboard.
In the end, these turned out to be more of a hassle than they were worth it and the main reason why these type of solutions never became really common and even close to custom water cooling loops.
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u/sharksandwich81 19h ago
You think people are just upvoting this without watching it or even knowing what TEC is?
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u/0xdeadbeef64 19h ago
You think people are just upvoting this without watching it or even knowing what TEC is?
Yes, some at least.
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u/sharksandwich81 19h ago
Clickbait would be if he didn’t mention it’s a TEC cooler.
What is he supposed to do? Title his video “this 18-year-old TEC cooler (which is a sub-ambient cooling technology that consumes lots of power) beat my Noctua air cooler”?
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u/0xdeadbeef64 18h ago
You also wrote "just upvoting this without watching it" in the post of yours I replied to.
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u/DanielKramer_ 10h ago
Why is he acting like it's notable that a sub-ambient cooler can outperform a compact Noctua cooler?
"this 18 year old urus beat my aston martin" (not included in the title but it's a cygnet)
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u/einmaldrin_alleshin 6h ago
Because TEC are essentially "sub-ambient at home". I assume the intent was to dunk on the thing because it's bad, but it actually managed to beat the chosen competition.
Kinda like a shitty muscle car with the mother of all turbo lags somehow getting a passable score on a race track.
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u/VenditatioDelendaEst 13h ago
Interesting. There are two quasi-parallel cooling circuits.
The coldplate is heated from one side by the CPU, and cooled internally by heatpipes from finstack 1, also from the back side by the TEC. The TEC hot side is cooled by heatpipes from finstack 2. Airflow is first through finstack 1 then 2 in series.
It seems to "work", although I wonder how it would compare to an otherwise-physically-identical cooler with no TEC and all 4 heatpipes in the coldplate.
I've had shower thoughts about a similar idea for a TEC-boosted water loop, where coolant flow is radiator -> TEC cold -> CPU -> TEC hot. The theory being that the TEC would only be getting the water a little colder and not have to pass the full TDP of the CPU, plus if the TEC failed or was overwhelmed you could cut the power and it would gracefully degrade to a normal loop.
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u/-WingsForLife- 12h ago
The Noctua D9 is a 4 heatpipe cooler he used for comparison, if that counts.
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u/hocheung20 12h ago
But why cool the coolant instead of cooling CPU directly by putting the TEC between CPU and waterblock?
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u/VenditatioDelendaEst 11h ago
Because
A single piece of copper with dense fins skived into it has less thermal resistance than a semiconductor multi-junction.
You can use way more TEC area if it doesn't have to physically fit on top of the CPU die. And the power density of CPUs is way more than cheap TECs are capable of. Maybe even expensive ones, but I've only ever seen the cheap ones on eBay/Amazon.
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u/Morningst4r 11h ago
TECs have an issue where if they get too hot they stop working altogether. Being sub ambient right next to the CPU socket isn’t the greatest either. Not sure this is the best solution to that though.
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u/doscomputer 7h ago
that could explain why theres 2 heat pipes on the cold side, makes sure the CPU never actually gets worse than ambient cooling if the peltier gets heat soaked.
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u/BloodyLlama 1h ago
if they get too hot they stop working
IIRC from being enthusiastic about them 20 years ago they will quite literally start working in reverse and switch hot/cold sides and cook your CPU.
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u/AzN1337c0d3r 11h ago
But that only happens if they get too hot?
Assuming sufficiently sized radiators for your system, the waterblock attached to the direct-CPU-TEC should never get hot enough to allow the TEC to go into thermal runaway.
If you insufficiently sized the radiators, both would make the TEC get into thermal runaway, although I suppose with the indirect system you have to heat the thermal mass of the whole water loop to get there.
However, if you do the indirect "cool the coolant" method, you need to introduce big restrictions into loop to do heat exchange with TEC to cool the small section of the loop effectively.
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u/DZCreeper 9h ago
7600X3D having microscopic power draw makes TEC look really good.
I would be curious to see it tested again with upgraded fans, maybe dual Noctua A12x25G2.
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u/0xdeadbeef64 20h ago edited 20h ago
der8auer compared with "the Noctua NH-D9 something" said 8 minutes in.
https://youtu.be/3NFJNYHoyMY?t=488