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3/00
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The
Thermaltake Golden Orb
Bright
and Shiny Heavy-Metal Cooling
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| High
Performance CPU Cooling and Heat Sinks
themselves, have literally become an art
form over the past few years. From
wild water cooled rigs to simplistic brute
force multi high speed fan set-ups, many
inventions have been mothered by the
overclocking community's relentless need
to eliminate heat from their CPUs and
cases.
Many
innovative designs of heat sinks, some
even with exotic metal alloy combinations,
have been brought to market. With
each new iteration of CPU technology it
seems as if the cooling folks are right
behind with a better way to cool these new
CPUs. This is a look at the
Thermaltake Golden Orb, a Socket 370 and
FC-PGA Cooler that is truly, in
every essence of the word, a design
"revolution". When the
folks at Plycon
sent us this unit for review, we were more
than impressed at first glance.
First impressions are usually fairly
accurate.
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| Thermaltake
Golden Orb Specifications /
Features |
| You've
never seen anything like
this before. |
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- Cylindrical
cross cut design for maximum surface
area exposure
- Anodized
aluminum material with a golden color
finish (not copper)
- Three
pin power fan connector
- 4,800
RPM Fan
- Bergquist
Hi-Flow 2000U Phase Change
Material (high end thermal paste) on
back of unit
- Metal
clip with high force retention to CPU
- 69mm
diameter X 45mm tall (
about 2.5" tall)
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Not
to sound too corny here folks but in this
case, a picture is really worth a thousand
words. This thing just plain looks
cool! I mean that in all aspects of
the word "cool" as well.
It looks like it will do a killer job of
drawing heat out of your CPU and is damn
impressive to behold. The weight of
the unit is fairly chunky as well but not
as overboard as some.
(note some pictures in this review were
taken by Tim Brinkly at BP6.com.
Tim is also a Writer for HotHardware)
One
of these Orbs is not like the others!!!!
(Click
images)
OOOhhh!!!
You meant an "Orb" not an "Orbb"
???? :-) ( sorry, just had to
throw that in there)
The design
is based somewhat on the HP
(now called Agilent Technologies)
"Polar Logic - Turbo Cooler"
technology. The spiral design is
similar but also different in some
respects since the fins are much
thinner. Perhaps they allow better
air flow through the device this
way. I am not too sure about this
though, having not seen a Polar Logic unit
up close. Either way, this
"Turbine" sort of design really
channels air through the the sink.
The fan blows into the unit and air is
distributed out through the fins very
evenly and efficiently. The box
notes that it has an "Ultra
Quite" fan but I would differ with
that. It is not as loud as some I
have heard but there is definitely as
whiney sort of turbine sound to the
unit. However, it is not to the
point of being an annoyance at all.
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| The
3 pin power fan connector is not nearly as
long at it should be. As long as you
have a spare motherboard three pin power
header near by, it should not pose a
problem. If you have to go across
the motherboard to a power source, you
will most likely require an
extension. I used a three pin power
connector splitter to act as an extension
for our unit. These can be found at
any good shop or super store that carries
this type of miscellaneous stuff.
Also of
note, is the little white square pad of
CPU interface material that is applied to
the back of the heat sink before it is
shipped out of the factory. This
material is Bergquist
Hi-Flow2000U and
I can assure you, you DON'T want to remove
this stuff and add your own paste.
This is extremely good thermal interface
material and actually doesn't get too
gooey but remains viscous (oooh there is a
dictionary term for you! it means
"thick" :-) ) when it gets
hot. It does a nice job of staying
on the sink and interfacing to the top
slug of a CPU. I would venture to
say that this stuff is better than any
average thermal paste you can find.
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| So
let's slap this thing on a CPU, shall we?
Installation
and Performance
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