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Page 1
Intro:
My first orb was the Thermaltake Golden Orb way back when the Abit BP6 was the thing to have. Imagine having to shave a bit of a heatsink off to have it fit on your motherboard. Those were the days when you had to work hard for every ounce of performance. These days, you can squeeze so much out of new CPUs. Thermaltake has released a brand new orb, the DuOrb. It combines heatpipes and two huge orb coolers.
Box:
Thermaltake package for the DuOrb is black and red which are my two favorite colors. The box indicates that it fits most CPUs on the market today included Core 2s and the Althon 64 series.
Parts:
The DuOrb comes complete with the needed manuals and mounting screws/brackets for both CPU series. I like that the screws use a spring for compression instead of just relying on the tightness of the screw. You get a package of thermal grease to apply as well.
DuOrb:
The DuOrb itself is very large. It combines two massive fans on a bed of metal. There are copper and aluminum fins (copper sucks in heat better, aluminum releases heat better). These fins surround the two caseless fans and are thin enough to give a massive amount of surface area to aid in the removal of cooling. The more surface area, the better.
Compared to a normal AA size battery, the cooler is both high and wide. There is a good reason that it is built this way. Most components on the motherboard surrounding the CPU are fairly low. The raised height of this cooler allows it to be big and to clear the components. The use of heatpipes allow this heatsink to be sparse on metal touching the CPU. There is a small block of copper that makes contact with the CPU.
The CPU block heats the substance in the heatpipes and the heat transfers to the large heatsinks in a very efficient matter. The use of heatpipes in today's heatsinks allows for designs such as this. It is a far cry from previous blocks of metal.
The bottom of the unit really shows the ornate look of it. It is very pretty to look at, almost like a work of art. Thankfully, it has utility in it. Remember to peel off that label. Cooling a CPU with a piece of plastic would be pretty difficult.
Removing the label leaves you a bit grossed out at how bad the surface looks. You will need to do some cleaning. A bit of lighter fluid will go a long way. After a bit of cleaning, the surface looked nice and shiny. It was ready to be installed.
Intro:
My first orb was the Thermaltake Golden Orb way back when the Abit BP6 was the thing to have. Imagine having to shave a bit of a heatsink off to have it fit on your motherboard. Those were the days when you had to work hard for every ounce of performance. These days, you can squeeze so much out of new CPUs. Thermaltake has released a brand new orb, the DuOrb. It combines heatpipes and two huge orb coolers.
Box:
Thermaltake package for the DuOrb is black and red which are my two favorite colors. The box indicates that it fits most CPUs on the market today included Core 2s and the Althon 64 series.
Parts:
The DuOrb comes complete with the needed manuals and mounting screws/brackets for both CPU series. I like that the screws use a spring for compression instead of just relying on the tightness of the screw. You get a package of thermal grease to apply as well.
DuOrb:
The DuOrb itself is very large. It combines two massive fans on a bed of metal. There are copper and aluminum fins (copper sucks in heat better, aluminum releases heat better). These fins surround the two caseless fans and are thin enough to give a massive amount of surface area to aid in the removal of cooling. The more surface area, the better.
Compared to a normal AA size battery, the cooler is both high and wide. There is a good reason that it is built this way. Most components on the motherboard surrounding the CPU are fairly low. The raised height of this cooler allows it to be big and to clear the components. The use of heatpipes allow this heatsink to be sparse on metal touching the CPU. There is a small block of copper that makes contact with the CPU.
The CPU block heats the substance in the heatpipes and the heat transfers to the large heatsinks in a very efficient matter. The use of heatpipes in today's heatsinks allows for designs such as this. It is a far cry from previous blocks of metal.
The bottom of the unit really shows the ornate look of it. It is very pretty to look at, almost like a work of art. Thankfully, it has utility in it. Remember to peel off that label. Cooling a CPU with a piece of plastic would be pretty difficult.
Removing the label leaves you a bit grossed out at how bad the surface looks. You will need to do some cleaning. A bit of lighter fluid will go a long way. After a bit of cleaning, the surface looked nice and shiny. It was ready to be installed.
Page 2
Installation:
I absolutely hate how the normal Intel stock coolers are mounted. It has been this horrible method of four mounting pins that always don't work well since the days of the Prescott CPU. The Northwood Pentium 4 had the best Intel heatsink by far. Thankfully, the Thermaltake DuOrb gives you proper mounting kits. This means you will have to get to the back of your motherboard which is a pain if it is already mounted in a case. Most people will be using a new fan on a new build anyway so this isn't a big deal. The good part about having proper mounts is that the correct pressure will be applied to the CPU surface. This is so important in cooling that most people forget. You want a nice flat surface to surface contact for the best cooling possible. And please remember to apply the heatsink grease sparingly. A little goes a long way.
The DuOrb comes with flashing red and blue LED fans so you get some extra lighting while using this heatsink. On my Asus P5N-T Deluxe, the cooler has no problem being mounted. The only problem comes from the fact that it complete overtakes the RAM sockets. Once you install this cooler, you can't get to the RAM so make sure you want to keep that RAM in the system before installing the cooler. Other than that, the unit was fine. The P5N-T Deluxe has tons of copper heatsinks surrounding the CPU area so if this fits on this board, it will have no problem on others.
Interestingly enough, the DuOrb's fans does not have PWM speed adjustment which means it will always be running at a certain speed. This isn't a big deal as you will see in the testing.
Use:
Most people will be upgrading from the standard Intel stock cooler, so that's what was tested against the DuOrb. My heatsink testing system is in the open and the room temperature is 68 degrees F (do the math for Celsius).
System setup:
Asus P5N-T Deluxe
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
2x »Crucial Tracer Red (4GB)
MSI Geforce 8600GTS
Maxtor 80GB Hard drive
Random DVD drive
Ubuntu 8.04 with lm-sensors
Both heatsinks were given a burn in of a day to allow for proper 'cooking' time. This burn in is important for cooling as it 'bonds' the heatsink grease better and allows it to flow over the surface of the CPU.
Temperatures reported come directly from lm-sensors and include the motherboard, CPU case, and the two individual cores. The idle results were done after 15 minutes of no use at the Ubuntu desktop. The load results were obtained by running two instances of mprime to load each core and after 15 minutes were taken.
The idle numbers are in favor of the DuOrb. That is expected. If the heatsink didn't perform better than the stock cooler, I'd be surprised.
The load numbers are even better. On the individual cores, you get a 9 degree difference between the coolers. The motherboard temperature rose with the DuOrb due to the heat being released which really shows the difference in cooling. Match this cooler with some good ventilation for superior cooling.
Conclusion:
The unit retails for about $65 which is very high for an extra part. The performance is great, but if you aren't overclocking, you won't need this. The DuOrb is a great heatsink for the enthusiast looking to get more out of their system. For everyone else, the stock cooler will do you just fine. It still looks great and it is good to see the orb cooler come back in style.
I'd like to thank Ramsom from Thermaltake for providing the unit for review.
Installation:
I absolutely hate how the normal Intel stock coolers are mounted. It has been this horrible method of four mounting pins that always don't work well since the days of the Prescott CPU. The Northwood Pentium 4 had the best Intel heatsink by far. Thankfully, the Thermaltake DuOrb gives you proper mounting kits. This means you will have to get to the back of your motherboard which is a pain if it is already mounted in a case. Most people will be using a new fan on a new build anyway so this isn't a big deal. The good part about having proper mounts is that the correct pressure will be applied to the CPU surface. This is so important in cooling that most people forget. You want a nice flat surface to surface contact for the best cooling possible. And please remember to apply the heatsink grease sparingly. A little goes a long way.
The DuOrb comes with flashing red and blue LED fans so you get some extra lighting while using this heatsink. On my Asus P5N-T Deluxe, the cooler has no problem being mounted. The only problem comes from the fact that it complete overtakes the RAM sockets. Once you install this cooler, you can't get to the RAM so make sure you want to keep that RAM in the system before installing the cooler. Other than that, the unit was fine. The P5N-T Deluxe has tons of copper heatsinks surrounding the CPU area so if this fits on this board, it will have no problem on others.
Interestingly enough, the DuOrb's fans does not have PWM speed adjustment which means it will always be running at a certain speed. This isn't a big deal as you will see in the testing.
Use:
Most people will be upgrading from the standard Intel stock cooler, so that's what was tested against the DuOrb. My heatsink testing system is in the open and the room temperature is 68 degrees F (do the math for Celsius).
System setup:
Asus P5N-T Deluxe
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
2x »Crucial Tracer Red (4GB)
MSI Geforce 8600GTS
Maxtor 80GB Hard drive
Random DVD drive
Ubuntu 8.04 with lm-sensors
Both heatsinks were given a burn in of a day to allow for proper 'cooking' time. This burn in is important for cooling as it 'bonds' the heatsink grease better and allows it to flow over the surface of the CPU.
Temperatures reported come directly from lm-sensors and include the motherboard, CPU case, and the two individual cores. The idle results were done after 15 minutes of no use at the Ubuntu desktop. The load results were obtained by running two instances of mprime to load each core and after 15 minutes were taken.
The idle numbers are in favor of the DuOrb. That is expected. If the heatsink didn't perform better than the stock cooler, I'd be surprised.
The load numbers are even better. On the individual cores, you get a 9 degree difference between the coolers. The motherboard temperature rose with the DuOrb due to the heat being released which really shows the difference in cooling. Match this cooler with some good ventilation for superior cooling.
Conclusion:
The unit retails for about $65 which is very high for an extra part. The performance is great, but if you aren't overclocking, you won't need this. The DuOrb is a great heatsink for the enthusiast looking to get more out of their system. For everyone else, the stock cooler will do you just fine. It still looks great and it is good to see the orb cooler come back in style.
I'd like to thank Ramsom from Thermaltake for providing the unit for review.