Hardware Phononic Hex 2.0 Review

And the hype train blows its final whistle and then smashes into a 10ft thick brick wall. *sigh*.

I remember when they were touting this a while back. Seems it was too good to be true.

 

Very expensive, unnecessarily complex, not very efficient and... many cheaper and more effective alternatives.

 

Aha! This is the niche cooler I've been waiting for!

My HTPC has proven difficult to find a good cooler for. This could be the one!

 

The whole peltier thing was discovered back in the 1830s, if it was possible to use it to revolutionize cooling it would have happened a lot sooner.

Around 10 years ago it had been attempted already to sell the same technology, both in combination with air and watercooling.

http://www.legitreviews.com/the-chilltec-thermoelectric-cpu-cooler-review_491
https://www.pcper.com/reviews/Cases...ltier-CPU-Cooler-Review/Components-and-Design

(there had been countless diy attempts at it before that, but those where usually aimed at getting sub ambient temps as a workaround to not spend the money Asetek was charging for the Vapochill).

 

For that much money, why not put in a relative humidity sensor and set it up to keep the cold plate temp just above the dew point to avoid condensation?

I've always imagined a TEC as an aftercooler in a WC loop. After the radiator would be a CPU block with a TEC attached to it and a good air cooler attached to hot side of the TEC and radiating on the outside of the case. The cool water coming out of the rad would be chilled by the TEC and the heat dumped to the cooler outside the case. The cold side of the TEC would not get cold enough to condense water out of the air and it would improve cooling. The downsides are power consumption in the TEC and increased flow resistance in the loop from an additional block. One of the up sides would be that the TEC can be switched on and off as needed and is not an essential element in the cooling.

 

I came here pretty much to same the same thing.

I should not need to install a program and sacrifice, CPU, disk space, and RAM to control a fan attached to a block of metal. If the motherboard doesn't have enough options to properly keep the CPU as cool as possible without being noisy, then I'll get a fan controller. Much cheaper and easier to just turn a physical knob.

 

With the amount of AIO coolers that have failed on me (3 have lasted less not much more than 12 months) I have been looking for alternatives as I am getting fed up replacing them so often (especially when the Thermaltake Frio in my wife's machine keeps going and going).

I read this review with interest as this looked like a promising alternative. Sadly the results don't stack up and it's just not worth the expense; very disappointing.