Quote Originally Posted by Uncle Jimbo View Post
littleowl - I wondered about that too. But then I looked up the 12706, and as S-I says, it is a 40mm so 1.57 inches. Close but should be OK with careful placement.

But I wonder why leuler chose those TECs. Cost does not seem to be much of an issue for him. 12709's are 10 for $50 on eBay and 12710's are about $6 each. Those are also 40mm TECs.

Just shifting to the 12710s changes the heat transfer a lot, basically moves 1.7 times the heat, but at 1.7 times the power. He could move a total of 1000W!!

With power control on the TECs, I think the 12710s would be a better choice, and it should be easy for leuler to swap them out. But he can do that when the design is checked out, or any time really.
As far as the copper bars, it was a case of buying when I saw a good deal
on eBay but before I had a fully coherent plan. Since money does matter
some in this project and the bars are marginally wide enough, I decided
to go with them.

Why did I choose the 12706s? My original plans were to build the most
powerful chiller with the constraint of staying under 600 watts of power.
Most home computers in the US are plugged into a 15 amp circuit. I wanted
the chiller to be such that it could also plug into that circuit and not trip
the circuit breaker ( I am an electrician and that sort of thought came
to my mind ). Ten 12706s fit that scheme. However, at the last minute
I decided to add 4 more TECs in order to be sure that I could handle
whatever amount of heat my QX6700 could dish out.

Also, I didn't want to spend too much money at this point without having
any testing. I could have used larger, undervolted TECs and wider copper
bars, but that would have bumped the costs up a fair amount. Every thing
I have used in this project I either had, bought off of eBay, or bought at
Home Depot. Except for one thing. Instead of getting two MCR320s for
the radiators, I decided to splurge for a PA120.3 to match the one I had.
So, to be honest, I didn't stick to my plan.

I do have a grandiose plan. If this version of the chiller works as planned,
I am going to move to more powerful TECs.