Quote Originally Posted by Uncle Jimbo View Post
I'll have to dust off some of my PCM control designs and see if the components are easily available. What I have used is based on a thermally controlled PCM fan IC, driving a big power MOSFET. The output goes into a low pass filter so the TEC sees a fairly smooth voltage. The circuits use only a few components and are easy to build. The MOSFETs don't need much heat sinking at these power levels, so the whole thing is compact and can be mounted anywhere convenient. If you have an old blown up power supply you probably have almost everything you need.

You should be able to achieve better than 1.0 CoP even with fairly big dT.
I think I can follow any design that you show me. And I have more of those
server PSUs ( got them really cheap ). I'll probably will need help in figuring
out which parts I'll need to rob from the PSU. Outside of resistors,
capacitors, and inductors, I get lost. What knowledge I have about
electronics comes from reading and E/M physics classes I took almost
20 years ago. The only bit of actual experience I have is that I once
replaced a failed resistor on a stereo circuit board.