The Peltier Cooled PC:
Considerations For Power Consumption And Heat

Written: 11/3/99
Written by: Ken Peter

At a recent show in Dallas, I picked up an AOC ICEBERG AC-586 Peltier cooler for Socket 7. Nothing on the package indicated Celeron or Socket 370, but the shape looked great for a BP6.  The fan was bigger than normal for this medium sized heatsink, and the baseplate was thicker too.

Overclock fever instantly got the better of my common sense. Had I known any better, I wouldn't have blown the $35. Though the ICEBERG does frost itself impressively in open air, when installed on my Celeron 366>>550 the temperature rose significantly and it crashed even at the normal speed. I immediately set out to learn the reason why.

How much heat does the typical overclocked Celeron actually create?  Starting with Intel's specifications, maybe we know enough to figure it out.

The hottest running Celeron processor we do have factory specs for is the 500. Power consumption of a CMOS device increases proportionally with both switch speed and voltage. We can extrapolate faster cores based on known physics. Please don't point out that the Celeron 500 is multiplier locked. I am aware of that. This is only about heat production above specified core voltages and frequencies.

550MHz 2.2V = ( 550MHz / 500MHz ) * ( 2.2V / 2.0V ) * 27W = 32.67W
600MHz 2.3V = ( 600MHz / 500MHz ) * ( 2.3V / 2.0V ) * 27W = 37.26W
650Mhz 2.4V = ( 650MHz / 500MHz ) * ( 2.4V / 2.0V ) * 27W = 42.12W
700Mhz 2.5V = ( 700MHz / 500MHz ) * ( 2.5V / 2.0V ) * 27W = 47.25W

You might tack on an extra Watt for driving 100Mhz FSB, two for 133Mhz.

Editor Note: The dissipations of the Celeron are actually higher than shown above. For any device with constant resistence, power increases as the square of applied voltage. Thus, increasing core 20% from 2 to 2.4 Volts increases dissipation by 44%, not 20%. - Moto (with a little help from Computer Nerd)

Next page: Why the Peltier didn't work

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