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I am in the process of building a "chill chamber" for electronic experiments * and as primary part for cooling it I am going to use a peltier element. This means though I need to get rid of probably around 150W, and my first thought for that was to use an older CPU cooler which had heatpipes, but unfortunately the contact area of the ground plate was smaller than the peltier element. I then turned to look what is available on the market, and its overwhelmingly much, and besides specs often not being clear nowhere I could almost never find specifications of the size of the contact plate/area (or whatever you call it). So for this special application I search for a cooling system with the following needs:

  • Contact area at least 40mm x 40mm
  • Mounting ability for 120mm fan
  • Fan must blow from the side
  • Of course best price for performance, price should not really exceed ~40EUR
  • Heatpipes
  • If it has direct contact heatpipes, the typical gap between the heatpipes and the rest of the contact area metal may not be bigger than 0.2mm
  • Size (without fans) should not exceed roughly 150mm cube

The following feature might be nice, but need not to be included:

  • A fan (don't care about noise, can run at 4000rpm)
  • Possibility for push/pull fan mounting
  • direct heatpipe contact
  • all contact area copper
  • heatsinking fins copper

*well of course also for beer.

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  • If the CPU cooler doesn't have enough area for the peltier element you could use a heat spreader.
    – 0-60FPS
    Nov 14 '16 at 1:53
  • 1
    While TEC modules are pretty cool devices, they aren't all that effective when the core is under load.
    – Bennett Yeo
    Apr 19 '17 at 4:17
  • @BennettYeo: luckily this is for a chamber in which complete low power devices are placed and cooled down
    – PlasmaHH
    Apr 19 '17 at 8:05
  • most 12V Peltiers in of themselves produce upwards of 110W of heat.
    – tuskiomi
    Jun 12 '17 at 18:48
  • @tuskiomi: there are many different ones, and you can not only chose the right one, but also drive them with lower current
    – PlasmaHH
    Jun 12 '17 at 20:22
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I'd recommend the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO. It has 4 direct contact heat pipes and is rated for 180W thermal dissipation. And goes for about £30. You can also buy some clips and convert it to push-pull rather than just push.

The dimensions are (H,W,L) 158.5mm x 120mm x 77mm (1 fan) or ~100mm (2 fans).

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1
  • Actually, it ships with clips for a second fan.
    – NZKshatriya
    Nov 14 '16 at 2:18

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