These things are very exciting. Flat piece of ceramic. Put a voltage across it and you get a temperature gradient, put a temperature gradient across it and you

These things are very exciting. Flat piece of ceramic. Put a voltage across it and you get a temperature gradient, put a temperature gradient across it and you get a voltage. I think there's a niche application to computer cooling in making watercooled machines smaller. The reasoning goes something like radiators work really well at high temperatures - say 75C to keep the pumps from dying - and CPUs work better when they're colder. Watercooling has a surface area problem - the water/temperature delta is a linear function of radiator surface area. Going from ten degrees to five involves lots more heat exchanger or very loud fans. Tricky if you're carrying the box. I think there is a point in the design surface for burning lots of electricity to hold the CPU somewhere around (maybe slightly below) room temperature while moving that heat and the extra power from the peltiers into a water loop at well over room temperature. Maybe a 40C delta between water and CPU, which probably involves stacking peltiers for even lower electrical efficiency. The point would be a smallish (like LAN party size) self contained watercooled box with terrible electrical efficiency and excellent thermal density. Unfortunately I don't actually have any sort of use for that so never checked the curve intersection holds up in reality.