Peltier Thermal-Electric elements have not been really popular cooling solutions for CPUs used in personal computers because of a number of disadvantages and difficulties they were constantly accompanied by. Recently Spire announced its own thermal-electric cooler for microprocessors code-named ICEWAVE. The company claims the part to be very efficient, however, it is doubtful that Spire was able to evade all the cons of thermal-electric elements to offer them as a mainstream cooling solution.

A Peltier Thermal-Electric Cooler can best be described as a "heat pump". It pumps heat from one side of the heatsink to the other using electricity. This means that a Peltier element has a hot and a cool side; usually the temperature difference between the hot and the cold side is about 70F degrees.

However Peltier coolers have one serious drawback. They do consume a lot of electric power. For example, if you take a regular Pentium 4 processor, which dissipates max 100W of heat and about 60-70W during common work, then you will need at least a 200W power supply for a Peltier cooler for this CPU. This way if you would like to use a Peltier cooler for such a powerful device as Pentium 4 processor you will either need an external power supply unit for it, or make sure that the PSU in your system is powerful enough to supply for both.

Considering all the difficulties Peltier thermal-electric elements bring it is doubtfully that such cooling solutions are really useful for personal computers. At least, not for ordinary computers, since hardware maniacs and enthusiasts usually utilise very exotic devices and can easily go with Peltier some day. 

Spire plans to offer its ICEWAVE coolers for Intel Pentium 4 (up to 4.0GHz) and AMD Athlon XP (up to 3400+) processors. Unfortunately, the company has not informed us about pricing and availability details.