USB can only provide .5A at 5v, and that's not a lot of power. If you can find a fridge that runs off 5v and takes less than 500mA, it can be done, but good luck finding one.
For a 12v fridge you can use one of the ones the MountainDew was giving away in thier cap contest, but ive seen them other places as well.
CAnt you run a fridge of a cig lighter? You can get one for your drive bay and run one of that. Maybe?
you can get those lighter sockets at http://www.xoxide.com/ for the stated i'm nto sure about the UK and such, but you can get them there for decently cheap here is "different" style one with a cup holder in it too, just don't install it under you CD-Rom drive :b http://www.xoxide.com/xray1.html and this is the "real" one http://www.xoxide.com/cili12vs.html
oh.. but sunbeam have had success drawing 10W from a USB port.. or atleast they claim to... http://www.sunbeamtech.com/PRODUCTS/USB COFFEE WARMER.HTML it says 10W@ 5VDC... well... 5V x 0.5A = 2,5W.... hmm.. go figure... wonder how they did that
well, the wattage would still be the same... i sendt an e-mail to sunbeam.. just to see what they have to say about it
i read 2 posts where people claim to have seen a fridge on usb for sale somewhere, there still is one question unanswered: WHERE
I suggest you look for peltier coolers... don't think that USB would give enough power put directly from the PSU, that would work.
Even if they could get 10w from the usb port, what good would it do them, even the most efficient active cooling means (not peltiers) are only 60% or so efficient. I think pelts are in the 30-40% range. So the most heat they could remove would be 4w of heat. They better have some really good insulation.
USB ports have 4 pins, right? Have you thought about modding the non-USB end into a molex? Then you might be able to run the fridge at 12V from the power supply but still have it appear to be a USB port. You would just have to make it so that no one mistook the "fridge port" for the USB port. Just my 2¢ worth.
