Technology World!

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.

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