Today for review I’ve got a good
looking and rather large CPU cooler, the Thermaltake Duo Orb. Having
such a large cooler in your system is nice as it works well, but
being so large I had to remove my 120mm exhaust fan for it to fit in
my case. The temps I got though are very good, read to see how it
compared to several others I’ve got on hand…
Product
Name: Thermaltake
Duo Orb CPU Cooler
Author: Kristofer Brozio
Sponsor: Thermaltake
Tech
Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Thermaltake
Duo Orb CPU Cooler
Fantastic
DuOrb series Design
– Extension of DuOrb Cooler
Design, after DuOrb VGA, the DuOrb architecture inspired
CPU
cooler with 6 different channels.
– Blue-Red LED Lights Fans, two
80mm fans come equipped with LED lights, one with blue and one with
red.
– Unique Silent Fan makes at
most 21 dBA at fan speed.
Magic
Cooling Performance Structure
– Copper Construction, Copper
Heatpipe, Fin, and Base, provides maximum heat conductivity and
dissipation performance.
– 6 Distinct Designed Heatpipes
remove heat from source via the channels.
– Double-Sided Radiant
Heatpipes Penetrating Fins transmit heat evenly and efficiently.
– Mirror Coating Copper Base
develops perfect heat dissipating contact surface between CPU and
DuOrb.
Smart
Thermal Management
– Dual-Flow Design further
utilizes system air flow to cool down surrounding temperatures and
dissipates the heat of CPU, RAM, VRM, North Bridge, and the back of
VGA card. Red-Light Orb cools RAM area and Blue-Light Orb cools CPU
surrounding area.
Specs:
Heatsink Dimension: 202(L) x
106(W) x 86(H) mm
Heatsink Material:
Copper/Aluminum Fins/Copper Base
Heatpipe: Copper Pipe 6 mm x 6
Fan Dimension: 80 x 20 mm
Fan Speed: 2000 RPM
Noise Level: 21 dBA
Max. Air Flow: 37.67 CFM
Max. Air Pressure: 1.27 mmH2O
LED Fan: Blue/Red
Power Connector: 3-pin
Rated Voltage: 12V
Started Voltage: 5V
Power Input: 5.04W (2 Fans)
MTBF: 50000 Hours
Weight: 598 g
Price:
USD : $79.99
A
Better Look at Things:
The Duo Orb comes in a nice
looking box that shows off the product, both front and back features
windows so you can get a look at it.
Inside we find the Duo Orb itself
along with an accessory box that contains the mounting hardware.
The Duo Orb is copper in color and
is large, it features two fans with six heatpipes. Overall the Duo
orb seems very well made, and looks nice.
The base is is nicely done to a
mirror finish and the appears to be flat.
{mospagebreak title= Installation, Testing and Comparison}
Installation,
Testing and Comparison:
Well trying to install the Duo Orb
was a slight problem, I had to remove the rear exhaust fan from my
case, it just wouldn’t fit. The ram I used fit fine with the Duo Orb,
but if you have ram that features tall heatspreaders it will not fit
as the Duo Orb covers the ram slots.
Actual installation is fairly
easy, you have to take the motherboard out of the case to install it
of course, but other than that it’s easy to install.
The Duo Orb looks nice when turned
on, the fans are different colors, red and blue.
The specs read 21db as the sound
level, but it sounds a bit louder than that honestly, 20db is about
the sound level of a whisper or a mosquito buzzing around, the Duo
Orb sounds much louder than that, but it’s not overly loud though.
I used my Core2Duo6420 for
testing.
Ambient room temperature was 19C
(+/- .3).
I used Orthos Stress Prime to get
load on the CPU and used CoreTemp to log the results which were then
average out to get a single temperature for the charts below.
First up is testing with the fan
connected to the CPU header on the motherboard, I’ve compared the Duo
to several other coolers I’ve got on hand.
I’m impressed by the Duo, it cools
very well, topping our charts for these coolers.
Next up is testing with the fans
connected to a Molex, or running at full speed.
Here again we see the Duo Orb tops
the charts easily with very good temps.
Lastly for testing I’ve got the
results with the fans off.
Here we see the Duo Orb didn’t
fare to well, but still the temps are well below the high threshold
for this CPU. One of the reasons I think the Duo Orb didn’t do to
well here is because the lack of the exhaust fan that would normally
be there, all of the other coolers in the chart had the exhaust fan
pulling air across them to help cool the CPU.
Summary
and Comments:
If you’ve got the room for a
cooler of this size then I can suggest you go grab it as it does
provide good cooling for your CPU.
Personally I don’t like the fact
that I had to remove my exhaust fan to install it in my system. One
other small problem is the fact that you won’t be able to use ram
with large heatspreaders while the Duo orb is installed in your
system.
DragonSteelMods gives the
Thermaltake Duo Orb a 4.5 out of 5 score.
Pros:
+Cools very well
+Looks cool
+Cools surrounding area
+Well made
+Installation is fairly easy
Cons:
-Very big
-Can be loud
-Might not fit with all
configurations
-Expensive
I
would like to thank Thermaltake for the chance to review the Duo
Orb and for their continued support of DSM.
review# 576