Okay. I have become very confused about the theory behind TECs. The consensus here seems to be to forget about TECs because they are useless. I also vaguely remember someone, maybe Cathar, going into an in-depth analysis of TECs and determining that, yes, they are in fact useless. But I don't get it. Can someone explain to me what has caused their downfall? Why are they so useless?

I have an old TEC here that I have had for years (since the time that they were more popular). I am going to have a water cooled loop with at least one PA120.3 radiator (cooled with Sanyo Denkis) and at least one DDC 3.2 pump with Petra top. My heating elements in the loop will consist of an overclocked E8400, a P35 northbridge, and a G92 8800 GTS. So it looks like, even with a single PA120.3 rad, I am going to have 'excess' cooling capacity that is going to be wasted. And if necessary I could buy another rad to throw in the loop to keep the TEC happy. I don't understand why I cannot just slap a TEC on the E8400 heat spreader and cool the hot side with my Storm or D-Tek water block to shave off a few more degrees.

I thought a TEC simply increased the delta-T between two elements while throwing in some waste heat. However, from what I have been reading this simplistic analysis seems to be wrong. What I don't understand is why. Can someone please take pity on me and explain this? What am I missing?