Yesterday, Intel knew how to surprise, because EK Water Blocks (EK-QuantumX Delta TEC) and Cooler Master (MasterLiquid ML 360 Sub-Zero) presented new coolers that are supposed to work with a Cryo Cooling Technology from Intel. What exactly was behind this was not entirely clear at first. Apparently, however, this is a project at Intel that aims to exploit the potential of Peltier cooling.

One thing first: Cryo Cooling Technology will not become a mass product. It is a pure enthusiast project, but not only with the core processors of the 10. Generation is compatible, but theoretically also older. However, EKWB and Cooler Master have designed their coolers on the LGA base 1200.

Roman Hartung alias der8auer received an early sample and can come up with some background knowledge. Intel developed the circuit board and software to control the Peltier element. The advantage here lies in the implementation, because Intel implements the control much better than was previously the case. This is how the room temperature (inside the housing) and the humidity are measured. A dew point can be calculated from this. Until this dew point is reached, there is no condensation on the cold elements of the cooler.

At a typical room temperature of 21 to 23 ° C and one Likewise typical humidity is the dew point at 13 to 16 ° C. Without further measures, components should not get colder than the dew point temperature in order to prevent condensation of the humidity.

The intelligence of the Cryo Cooling Technology lies in the software. This is also shown in the video. Among other things, the ambient temperature, the calculated dew point temperature and the temperature of the cooling block itself are displayed here Cool the Peltier element so that it does not fall below the dew point. The temperature of the cooler is therefore adapted to the existing load. The Peltier element does not have to run in idle mode.

In unregulated mode, however, the Peltier element always runs under full load. In the video a consumption of 164 W can be seen, because the consumption is also read out by the software. The Peltier should be able to achieve a maximum power consumption of 200 W. Already at 164 W it cools the Core i9 – 10900 K in idle mode to below 0 ° C. Here you have to be careful that no condensation damages or destroys the hardware.

The provided Core i9 – 10900 K should then also prove its performance in interaction with the cooler. It should be mentioned that this is a pre-selected model. This was set at 1, 23 V and with the standard power limits of 250 W (PL2) and 125 W (PL1) operated.

Via the Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB), this processor then reaches an all-core turbo clock of 5.3 GHz. With one or two active cores, it is even 5.8 GHz. However, the TVB is also being expanded to include an OC function. Instead of a fixed offset, this can be set manually. Intel’s Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) is being expanded to include the corresponding functions.

Cryo Cooling Technology is not a technology for the mass market, Intel also admits that. The way the product was launched is somewhat irritating, however. With regard to the start of the Ryzen – 5000 – processors, it should be in Intel’s interest to draw some attention to its own side. But at the start this could not really work, because an important context was missing that we had to work out first, which we hopefully succeeded in 11. Use Core Generation aka Rocket Lake. This will also be used on the LGA 1200, in 14 nm and should attract attention with high boost clock rates.