Ultra ChillTec Thermo Electric CPU Cooler

Compared to stock air cooling, there is no denying the ChillTec TEC's superior performance, but our next question is at what cost does this added cooling potential come at? 

Performance  - Power Consumption Wattage Draw

So, during our temperature testing, we logged our wattage draw on the system to see how each solution compared.  With the stock cooling there was no fluctuation, however, since the ChillTec throttles the peltier component as well as fan speeds, we recorded the lowest and highest reading during each test.

Here we get a clear idea of just how much energy the ChillTec TEC consumes in order to keep the CPU running at such desirable temperatures.  With the CPU idle, the test system outfitted with the AMD stock cooler had a steady draw of 120w.  When we switched over to the ChillTec TEC, we saw the system swing as low as 98w while jumping to 163w with the ChillTEC's fan on high.  This was a steady cycle of up and down that was a result of both the peltier being enabled and disabled as well as the fan throttling.  When we ran the CPU at full load, the the wattage draw of our test bed climbed to 179w with stock cooling.  With the ChillTec TEC, the fluctuations disappeared with the fan running steadily and the peltier constantly engaged, drawing near 60w more than stock cooling at 225w total.

After seeing just how much more power the ChillTec TEC requires to do it's job, our next question was just how much of a benefit the peltier adds up to for the amount of added power draw.  In our next test, we ran a few comparisons with and without the peltier to see just how much of a benefit this technology is for the amount of energy it consumes.