Introduction
From the manufacturer
Thermaltake:
- Radiate aluminum golden fin provide sufficient air flow.
- Copper core touches the heat center directly and conducts heat quickly.
- Silent Fan with blue LED, 17dBA only.
- Universal design for Intel P4 LGA775 & AMD K8.
Heatsink Dimensions |
120 x 63 mm |
Fan Dimensions |
100 x 24 mm |
Heatsink Material |
Copper Core & Aluminum Extrusion (66Fin) |
Fan Voltage |
12V, 5V startup |
Power Input |
1.56W, 3 Pin connector |
Fan Speed |
1600 RPM +- 10% |
Air Flow |
Max. 35.43 cfm, max. 1.5 mm H2O |
Noise |
17 dbA |
Weight |
753g |
Life time |
30,000 hours (= ~ 3.5 years) |
Packaging
Box contents:
- CPU Cooler
- Bag with mounting parts for Socket LGA775
- Bag with mounting parts for Socket 939
- Backside mounting plate for Socket 939
- Thermal grease
- Instruction manual
The contact area of the heatsink base is very flat, but has some minor scratches, those should not affect cooling performance.
Two blue LEDs light up the fan when it is running.
Installation
Installation is extremely easy and can be done in a few minutes. The easy understandable english manual covers installation for Socket 775 and two installation methods for Socket 939. On the Thermaltake Website you can also find a nice Flash animation which shows the installation process.
During installation on the DFI Lanparty NF4, I noticed that the cooler is so big, that access to one memory slot will become a problem.
With the cooler installed, it is no longer possible to add or remove memory in slot 4. Most people use slots 1 and 2 anyways, so if you really have to use slot 4, install the memory before putting on the cooler. tried fitting a few memory modules, and even with a heatspreader, there should be enough space left to install the cooler.
The Golden Orb II does not fit on the ABIT AA8XE. Most people who know that board would guess that the MOSFET OTES area is the problem here. When installed, the cooler's mounting clip makes contact with the OTES' plastic, but it fits. The real problem is caused by the chipset cooler, if you look at the following picture, you see that the cooler makes contact with the chipset cooler, but there is still about one cm left for the second mounting screw to align.
Update: Thermaltake tech support tells us that you have to rotate the chipset cooler by 180° and then install the CPU Cooler rotated by 180° as well. It will fit now.
Height limit for a northbridge cooler, if it has to fit under the cooler, is 4 cm. It is recommended to check if the cooler fits your board before buying.
In order to make sure that mounting pressure on the CPU is not exceeded, Thermaltake has added limiters to the screws. You just screw it down till it stops, the springs help distribute the load on the CPU evenly.
Performance
We tested the Golden Orb II on an ABIT AL8 i945P motherboard. ABIT's uGuru software was used to get the CPU temperature. Room temperature was kept at a constant 20°C.
| CPU: |
Intel Pentium 4 3.0F (S775; 2MB; Prescott) |
| Clock speed: |
15 x 200 MHz = 3000 MHz, Memory at DDR2-400 |
| Motherboard: |
ABIT AL8, Bios 1.3
i945P |
| Memory: |
2x 512MB OCZ PC2-5400 EB Platinum 4-2-2-8 |
| Video Card: |
ATI X850 Pro PCI-E |
| Harddisk: |
Maxtor DiamondMax 160GB |
| Power Supply: |
HEC Power475 |
| Software: |
Windows XP SP2, Catalyst 5.7 |
Idle means Windows sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load is after 30 minutes of two instances of Prime95.
Cooling performance at both 6V and 12V is comparable to the Stock Intel Heatsink. You may wonder now, what's so good about the Thermaltake Golden Orb II then? It's the sound levels:
At 6V this cooler is virtually inaudible. I got my fingers into the blades twice during sound level measurements, because I didn't notice the fan was running. Even at the extremely quiet 6V setting the Golden Orb II could keep our hot Prescott CPU at acceptable heat levels.
Once we increased voltage to 12V, the fan remained quiet while CPU temperature dropped.
Unfortunately, Thermaltake does not offer a way to control the fan speed directly, so you have to rely on your motherboard or your fan controller for fan speed control.
Value and Conclusion
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- The Thermaltake Golden Orb II is going for around $29, which I find is a fair price for a cooler of this size.
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- Very quiet
- Good performance
- Supports both S939 and LGA775
- Easy to install
- Nice design
- Blue LEDs in fan
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- No fan speed control
- Little space near memory area on some motherboards
- Does not fit ABIT AA8XE easily
- Heavy
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| 8.0 |
This cooler is definitely not built to get huge overclocks, temperatures are comparable to a standard Intel heatsink. However, moderate overclocks will sure work fine.
If you are fed up with the noise your CPU cooler puts out, this is one of the best coolers you could get, in order to reduce sound levels. I would put this cooler into my Media PC right on the spot, if it wasn't too big for the custom case. The size of the Golden Orb II could become a problem on some motherboards, it is best to check if it fits your system before buying. |
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