COOLING THE CARPUTER

**moahdib** · 06-21-2001, 03:11 PM

I was wondering what anyon ehere has done about cooling the carputer. I was thinking of extending a tube of some sort to the trunk and cool it using my car's AC but that's a hassle.. and I dont know where Im gonna stick the tube from the front of the car to the trunk.
So i found this thing peltier mini ac cooler and I am thinking of either building one myself or buying one. You can power is using the 12V from car battery.
http://www.melcor.com/maa50t.htm

You can just seal off all the holes in the case and have it cool just the air inside with no air exchange between ambient and the computer case. What you guys think?

**moahdib** · 06-21-2001, 03:18 PM

Geezuz i just called them to ask for pricing:
MAA070T-12 $286
MAA050T-12 $330 ( the one pictured above)

so much for that idea... can anyone give me some help? I need to find a way to cool my system. The temp in my trunk here in CA gets easily up above 130F during the summer...

**RaZor** · 06-21-2001, 03:52 PM

i know a few people who use peltiers. they only spent like $50 for theirs, though. theres another thing that you also must remember and that you are only cooling the cpu...NOT the rest of the case. Since the cpu side is really cold, the other side of the peltier is really hot.

**moahdib** · 06-21-2001, 08:07 PM

Hmm i wasn't talking about cooling the CPU. I was talking about cooling the computer CASE itself.

**cenwesi** · 06-21-2001, 08:23 PM

dont worry about the case. I think CPU is what u really need to cool down. If that cpu gets too hot then ur OS will go nuts.

**cybuch** · 06-21-2001, 08:29 PM

So far I haven't had any problems at all with my carputer in my trunk, and it was 110 today. Infact for the last couple days! I hope I dont start having problems, I will keep everyone posted.
Steve

**cenwesi** · 06-21-2001, 08:44 PM

prolly cuz ur trunk is cooler

**LoreleiGuy** · 06-21-2001, 09:19 PM

check www.eio.com . Last time I looked, they had some spare peltiers for $19, but that's more of a cpu-specific thing. Theirs run off of 5 volts.

The way peltiers work is by inducing a thermal gradient from a voltage difference (a thermocouple in reverse), but like all systems, they are not perfectly efficient. Which means that you will increase the total heat in the system, but cool a localized area. Much like your fridge at home. I would double check to see how much you can really cool using one of these things. Whatever the "cool" surface is touching will do well, everything else will get (slightly) even warmer.

**Technics** · 06-21-2001, 09:36 PM

It seems like you might be complicating matters. If you use a peltier to cool the case you will need a fan inside the case to circulate the cool air and one outside to cool the peltier (you could allways build your machine into a car fridge

). In my design I used 3mm aluminium sheet which was cut and bent so that it sat on top of the CPU and ran through a slot on the outside of the case and attached to a large heatsink. The same was done to the DC-DC converter. It's currently winter here in Australia (maximum temp is about 30C.) and so far I have had no problems using this method. The bonus is there are no fans to fail and collect dust.