X-bit labs

Brother against Brother: Thermaltake Big Typhoon vs. Thermaltake MaxOrb (page 3)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 04/19/2007 | 09:02 AM ]

Design

There is not much new, let alone revolutionary, in the MaxOrb design. The changes it brings into the well-known Orb series should rather be regarded as a deep modification. The shape of the cooler’s heatsink hasn’t changed much and remains a ribbed bowl with a fan in the center:

The bowl is rather large in diameter at 144 millimeters, so the manufacturer easily placed a 120mm fan into it. What is the most surprising thing, the cooler weighs only 465 grams with all its large dimensions! For comparison, the Big Typhoon is as heavy as 813 grams while its modernized VX version, 822 grams.

But as soon as you turn the MaxOrb upside down, you realize that Thermaltake’s engineers have finally set themselves to work and come up with something truly new and original (they took 3 years to do that, by the way :)):

So, there are six 6mm copper heat pipes going out of the nickel-plated copper base. Each pipe makes up a semicircle in its separate tier of aluminum ribs, distributing heat flow among them.

The manufacturer’s “Tt” logo is pressed out in the outermost (tallest) row of the ribs. This row is also reinforced with a rigidity rib that additionally enlarges the heat dissipation area. The edges of the ribs are processed so that you didn’t cut your fingers on them.

The ends of the pipes meet in the horizontal mounting block. This makes the whole arrangement robust because the heatsink actually hangs on the heat pipes:

There is a total of 142 aluminum ribs hanging on the outermost pipes. There are fewer of them on the internal tiers.