hi is it possible to have sub zero temps (cpu) while having no noise - or at least very little noise?
Since you're in the UK www.coolercases.co.uk Do LOTS of reading before you delve into TEC cooling. The hot side of the pelt will need to be watercooled well. You cannot passively cool it in any way. If you want silence then this might not be the way to go as you will need a beefy rad and good airflow to keep the water temps down. It may be possible to do Vapo-chill but you would need to really insulate the compressor housing to keep it silent. That will build heat and wear on the system. Have a look around and see what you like. I don't personally believe that high-performance, especially sub-zero, can be had without substantial fan noise. just my 0.02 Edit: Wait for Nexxo to give you the lowdown. In the meantime check the stickies at the top of this forum.
Phasechange (either directdie or chilled water & pelts), swap out the fans for quieter, ensure entire unit is sat on antivibration material to reduce vibration from compressor. Replace all other fans in system with passive sinks. Done. Don't push the heatload too much. That and pelts are the only two ways for subzero temps, silent or otherwise, other than sitting with an infinite supply of dryice and continually adding it to a CPUTube.
Look for posts by Nexxo and Haddy and other cooling gurus. They have gone in depth on the subject of cooling performance vs. silence in the past. They give some really good info. If there was some way to have a totally silent system and maximum overclocking performance, wouldn't everyone be doing it? You basicaly have a choice between small bore, slow flow, low noise systems with adequate cooling potential or the big boy stuff like phase change and pelts. Look for reviews but I'm sure I remember phase change systems being generally noisy. Pelts add heat to the water which will have to be taken care of efficiently if you want the pelt to work well and keep your temps at sub-zero. This usually means high air-flow over your rad and the subsequent noise that creates. I would advise against the water chiller idea as it has proven to be more of a problem than it is worth several times in the past. Again, and also visit Procooling forums. The key is reaching a balance between noise and performance that you can live with. You seem to already have a silent system and if that is what you are going for then I think you are already there.
well, if you wanted to you could use a water cooling system and find a way to put peltiers ON THE RADIATOR. (you'd have to insulate the CPU and the tubes going to it) I am thinking about doing this, but haven't been able to buy a WC system yet.
Personaly I would go for a chiller insted of a pelt setup. Insulate the tubes and put the chiller in another room. Also a chiller will give you more stable temps compared to a pelt and it could be cheeper to build and cheeper on the good old wallet when it comes to monthly electric bills.
Don't bother pursuing that... look round on the net (ocforums, procooling forums, xtremesystems - all the reputed performance cooling sites) and you'll find that method to be completely inefficient and ineffective, and rarely recommended due to negligible gains vs cost to implement.
