Thermaltake Golden Orb II Review 0

Thermaltake Golden Orb II Review

by
W1zzard
,
on ,
Manufacturer: Thermaltake

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

  • The Thermaltake Golden Orb II is going for around $29, which I find is a fair price for a cooler of this size.
  • Very quiet
  • Good performance
  • Supports both S939 and LGA775
  • Easy to install
  • Nice design
  • Blue LEDs in fan
  • No fan speed control
  • Little space near memory area on some motherboards
  • Does not fit ABIT AA8XE easily
  • Heavy
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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Apr 27th, 2024 00:02 EDT change timezone

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