Does anyone have any experience with Peltier cooling as I am thinking of buying one,
i am looking to cool an athlon xp 2500+ and overclock it.
I have heard of condensation problems.
how well do they really work?

why would you overclock it?
AMD's are already overclocked. I think if you overclock it more, cooling will be like hell. And I don't really see a reason why overclocking an AMD xp2500+ ... I have a 1800+ and there are only 2 things that should be faster at my pc: the harddisk and my internet connection (but I'm a poor open-source user so I can't afford SCSI, nor a connection to the backbone )

or you just want to overclock it to keep your desk warm during winter?
good luck!

Peltier's do have condesnsatoin problems. One side can get extremly cold, but the colder it gets, the hotter the otherside gets. So you can imagine the condensation.

Why not go with water cooling?

There are ways to protect from condensation. I forget the name of the stuff though. If you check around pc modding sites and overclocking sites you'll probably be able to find it pretty easily. Also - you can't use the peltier alone. If you put it on alone it's just like leaving your cpu without a heat sink/fan. It would burn itself out followed soon by your cpu. You can put normal heatsinks fans(I've seen it done with some Swiftechs)but you'll have to have a powerfull fan still to keep the thing kool and powerfull fans = more noise. Normally people use them in combonation with water cooling for the best effect.

I'm with Lostman on this. Watercooling wil allow you to get pretty extreme overclocking levels while keeping the CPU temperature within a couple of degrees of room temperature.

The Peltier will allow you, depending upon the TEC's wattage, actually get the cpu temps below the ambient temperature of the environment it's in, but it suffers from two inherent problems. 1) They require extreme amounts of power to function well, and 2) You have to be very careful to make sure that you handle the condensation produced by the process.

Personally, I'm using a Maze 2 block and GPU waterblock from Danger Den, and the rest of the parts on my water cooler are from an aquarium supply store, except for the condensor, which is a heater core I pulled out of a 72 Cutlass in a Junk yard for $5. All in all, my entire system cost me less than $100 2 years ago, and it's been working perfectly ever since. My CPU temps have yet to get more than 3 degrees above room temperature, and that's even with pushing the CPU hard with a burn program for several hours. Just make sure, if your going to try it, to get the silicone hoses (used a hose that's used by the air bubbler in an aquarium). The silicone last forever, while the plastic ones will eventually crack and leak. You can also buy an entire water cooling kit from Danger Den if you don't want to hunt for parts.
http://www.dangerden.com/