I would normally agree with your thoughts. My issue is the amount of power traditional chillers draw, not so much the cost. From someone with my resources, I already have most of the stuff it would take to build one of these, so my curiosity is sparked. It certainly doesn’t appear that it would cost me more than a couple bucks to build something like a 50 watt unit anyways. I’m not entirely sure what a 50 watt unit would do though. My environment would be probably borderline to running hydro without any cooling, so something small like that could make all the difference for me trying something like a small dwc unit.
I do agree that there’s a little more to this than what I would typically tell someone to buy a couple of components and wire up a light. But it’s not much different.