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Keeping powered devices cool during operation is often a primary goal whilethey are in development, especially at the very beginning of the design process.
Heat tends to lend itself to many types of problems when a device is expected to run constantly in a variety of climatic conditions, principal among them are excessive wear, component stress, and molecular breakdown.
Many of these same factors are identical to the warnings issued by CPU manufacturers to users who intend to overclock their processors to speeds that are significantly higher than the stock level while not improving upon the cooling methods for the chip.
As current CPUs climb in MHz speed and power consumption, whether by design or through overclocking, the byproduct of the rate increase is a higher heat level.
Passive coolers, or coolers that are designed around an aluminum heatsink and a powered fan, are only capable of dissipating a certain amount of heat before they're overwhelmed and rendered ineffective.
Often times when high levels of CPU MHz speed are sought by PC users, the only answer to deal with the heat generated by the processor is turning to an active solution, one that creates an artificially colder environment for the CPU to operate in.
Enter the Peltier Effect.
Originally discovered in 1834, the "Peltier Effect" consists of passing electrical current through crystalline semiconductor material, which then generates a temperature differential across the material.