Thermaltake Golden Orb II Review - PAGE 1

Introduction

When Thermaltake introduced the original Golden Orb 5 years ago, it opened an entirely new market within the third party cooler segment. Instead of having to choose solely between the poor quality Intel heat sink and ridiculously overpriced yet inefficient high end coolers, PC owners could now drop as little as $15 for a relatively quiet but extremely effective CPU cooler.

This was a bombshell in the cooler market and soon a multitude of look-alikes flooded store shelves. Thermaltake quickly realized the potential they were sitting on and began introducing Orb after Orb, supporting not only different sockets, but different uses altogether from purely noise reduction to overclocking. The Orb boom can be said to have crashed after the release of the extremely loud Dragon Orb in 2001 which used a huge, deafening, 7200 RPM fan to its own determent, ending the stream of Orb branded coolers.

With the Golden Orb II, Thermaltake is going straight to its roots. The designed-from-the-ground-up mid range cooler is the re-manifestation of everything the original Golden Orb was designed to be - Quiet, Cool, and well priced.

Impressions

While the original Golden Orb could be had for less than half the Orb II's $38 MSRP, times have changed and there are plenty of Intel Prescott users looking for something a little more interesting to cool their molten cores with than the stock Intel package. Conveniently, this cooler is also compatible with all current generation CPU mounts (LGA775, Sockets 939, 754 and 940) through the use of brackets designed for each. These along with four screws, washers and two standoffs used in attachment with AMD boards are included along side basic instructions.

The cooler has a fairly manageable 120mm diameter but weighs in at roughly 750 grams, not making it a true lightweight by current standards. It uses 66 aluminum fins in a radial pattern protruding from a copper core in a very similar fashion to what Zalman has been doing with their current line up of CPU coolers. The 100mm fan in the Golden Orb II spins at only 1600 RPM, but is large enough to still move a respectable 35 CFM of air. When powered up, a blue LED illuminates the pearly translucent blades giving the cooler a unique look in comparison to similarly constructed heat sinks.