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The Thermaltake Golden Orb
Bright and Shiny Heavy-Metal Cooling

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.

 

Thermaltake Golden Orb Specifications / Features
You've never seen anything like this before.

 

Orb Me Baby!!

  • 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)
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.

 
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.

So let's slap this thing on a CPU, shall we?

Installation and Performance