X-bit labs

Brother against Brother: Thermaltake Big Typhoon vs. Thermaltake MaxOrb (page 5)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

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

Installation

The enclosed guide gives you a detailed description of the installation process for every supported platform. Well, the process is intuitive, so you can just as well do without the guide.

The universal fastening frame is the main thing here:

The photo above shows this frame with LGA775 fasteners. As for fastening this frame on platforms for K8 processors, you only have to replace the plastic fasteners with barrels and screws and an appropriate back-plate. I guess it’s clear that you have to take the mainboard out of the system case to do that and your choice of the orientation of the fastening frame is going to be limited. But the MaxOrb being not a tower-like cooler, this fact is not as critical for it as for tower designs, so I don’t count this as a drawback.

It’s all simple after that (well, there has not been anything difficult before, either). Just put the frame on the socket and insert the plastic locks into the mainboard’s holes:

Then smudge some thermal grease on the CPU, put the cooler down and fasten it to the CPU heat-spreader by means of the pressure clip and the long thumb nut:

The pressure force is high. The cooler doesn’t wobble on its base as some other models do (including the Thermaltake Big Typhoon 120 VX, by the way). The plastic frame is compact enough for the mainboard’s elements around the socket not to get in its way.

The MaxOrb is only 95 millimeters high, so it doesn’t look large inside the system case:

As I said above, the cooler’s fan has blue highlighting which will please every modder, especially at night:

The cooler’s fan is very quiet at its minimum 1300rpm. When working at 2000rpm, it is just as noisy as any other 120mm fan at such a speed. The fan bearing doesn’t rattle whatever speed you select for it.