Thermal performance of thermoelectric cooler (tec) integrated heat sink and optimizing structure for low acoustic noise / power consumption

Abstract

In this paper, authors are proposing the idea of applying thermoelectric cooler (TEC) to CPU cooling. The proposed cooling system is a no moving parts apparatus that can improve thermal performance by keeping same form factor. This system will accommodate an increase in the CPU thermal design power and/or lower the noise of the cooling solution. The thermal performance of this proposed device will be presented together with the optimization for low acoustic noise and low TEC power consumption. As a result, we found out that "hybrid structure", which was composed of an integrated combination of TEC integrated heat sink and heat pipe remote heat sink, could reduce acoustic fan noise and required TEC power consumption to cool the CPU. In one particular case, we succeeded to develop a compact cooling device which had a capability of CPU cooling for 130 W at acoustic fan noise less than 40 dB, with COP = 10.8