The base quality is excellent. It has the grooves and uses soldering as the best contact method:

The base surface is also perfectly polished:

Here Thermaltake undoubtedly did a great job.

The MaxOrb EX fan is the same as the fan on the previous MaxOrb model and on Thermaltake V1 AX we have just discussed above:

You already know its specifications, so I won’t repeat them here again. However, the rotation speed regulator is different and is located in a different spot than the one in V1 AX:

Although, just like in the previous case, you will have to open your system in order to use the fan rotation speed regulator wheel.

The cooler is installed exactly the same way as before. However, there was only one way we could attach the universal Thermaltake MaxOrb EX retention to DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard and only by sawing off one of the loops and removing the memory DIMMs first:

As you see, not very convenient and not quite thought-through, although the cooler was in fact installed in the most favorable way for efficient cooling (with the heatpipes ends facing upwards):

The blue LED highlighting remained the same. However, the new MaxOrb EX costs a little more: around $55.