by Sergey Lepilov
05/29/2008 | 03:26 PM
We mentioned in one of our recent articles devoted to processor cooling systems that the manufacturers tend to design very attractive-looking and originally shaped solutions these days. As you probably remember, the reason is very simple: the heat dissipation of contemporary AMD and Intel processors doesn’t increase any more. In other words, the existing air coolers are efficient enough for successful CPU overclocking and stable operation at much higher speeds (up to 4GHz).
In the meanwhile, cut-throat competition in this market segment and the need to fight for customers push well-known brand names to design and launch into mss production such coolers as our today’s hero, for instance, Thermaltake DuOrb (CL-P0464). We have already reviewed its younger brother, the VGA cooler with the same name – CL-G0102, which proved highly efficient and performed perfectly well in our tests.
Our today’s review will reveal the efficiency and potential pf the new DuOrb cooling solution for CPUs.
The newcomer arrived in a very beautiful vertical box made of thick glossy cardboard. There are cut-out windows in the center of the front and back sides following the cooler heatsink and base shape:
Besides, the front side of the package lists all supported processors and mentions compatibility with Socket AM2 on a separate tag. The reverse and side parts of the package are used for description of the cooler key features and the complete list of its technical specifications.
There is a transparent plastic casing inside the exterior cardboard box. It is shaped exactly like the cooler itself that is why it holds the device very securely:
The cooler fans are secured with a plastic cover at the top.
There is a small box with the accessories bundle at the top of the package. Among the accessories you get the following items:
The cooler is already available in retail and sells for around $59.90.
Thermaltake DuOrb boasts exclusive original design. I am absolutely certain that no one can pass by it without checking it out. Take a look yourselves:
Very beautiful, isn’t it? The cooler measures 202 x 106 x 86mm and weighs 598g. The skeleton that holds this entire structure is made of six copper heatpipes (6mm in diameter) that originate from the copper plate in the cooler base:
The heatpipes are split into two groups: three in each. Ach of the three heatpipes within a group holds its own heatsink array. Moreover, the arrays are distributed between the heatpipes in a very smart way. Two heatpipes coming out of the center of the cooler base that bears the most thermal workload pierce the outer heatsink that consists only of thin copper plates:
The next pair of heatpipes (if we move from the center of the base to its sides) goes along the smaller interior diameter, where the heatsink array consists of aluminum plates. And the last two heatpipes coming out of the sides of the base hold only small aluminum heatsink segments. Taking into account that this cooler is relatively light-weight and the heat dissipating surface of its heatsinks is not that big, it would make sense to make all the heatsinks from solid copper.
The whole thing is cooled with two 80-mm fans at the top. The fans are installed on an aluminum frame:
The fans rotate with a constant speed of about 2,000RPM creating 37.67CFM airflow and generating 24dBA of noise. The frictionless bearings in the fans are promised to deliver 50,000 hours of failure0free operation. Besides, one of the fans has red LED highlighting, while another one glows blue. We will provide the photo later in this review.
As you can easily guess from the looks of the cooler, DuOrb is designed to efficiently cool not only the CPU, but also the components around the processor socket as well as system memory modules. According to the illustration from the manufacturer, the cooling process looks as follows:
Looks quite interesting, I have to say. We only hope this beauty will not fail the CPU cooling in real life. We will certainly check it out.
The cooler base is covered with protective plastic film with a warning that it needs to be removed before installation. Once the film is removed, you can see very well-finished base:
Although if you take a closer look at it, you can still notice the machine marks:
The surface is very even – the thermal compound imprint on the glass surface was impeccably even.
The base has special grooves for heatpipes, which increase the effective cooling surface and ensure better contact between the heatpipes and the base:
We didn’t notice any soldering marks or thermal glue on the heatpipes or base sides. All in all, we would like to specifically stress that the whole thing is put together very neatly and thoroughly. There is a special aluminum plate above the heatpipes that supports the universal retention plate.
So, now let’s move on to the next part of our article devoted exactly to cooler installation procedures and retention parts.
You can find all the details regarding cooler installation on all contemporary platforms in the user’s manual that comes with it, however, there is still a lot we can tell you in this part of our review. First of all, we would like to say that Thermaltake DuOrb doesn’t fit on Socket 754/939/940 mainboards. Looks like Thermaltake considers this socket type to be outdated already, so there is no retention for it among the bundled accessories. To install the cooler onto the remaining two types of sockets – LGA 775 and AM2 – you will have to remove the mainboard from the system case first, because you will have to fasten some retention parts with screws going through the mainboard PCB:
You don’t need to use any backplate for LGA 775 mainboards, but fasten the retentions with included padded screw nuts on the other side of the mainboard PCB. By the way, there are only four pads in the kit, and the manual suggests that you use them only on the reverse side of the PCB. In this case, we wonder why they didn’t include any pads for the front side of the PCB, as the metal retentions lie right onto the textolite and may damage the contacts. However, it is certainly not a big issue, because even a non-overclocker can find a spare set of four washers or pads to go beneath the retention brackets.
And then everything is very simple: spread the thermal compound onto the CPU heat-spreader, install the cooler on top, insert the press-bracket into its base and fasten it with two spring-screws on both sides:
For Socket AM2 mainboards the installation procedure is exactly the same, although you will have to use different brackets and a backplate.
Now I have to say a few words about compatibility. First of all, when the cooler is installed, one of its heatsinks hangs over the memory modules. Since only standard memory modules can fit beneath the DuOrb heatsink, you will have to give up any DIMMs with tall heat-spreaders for good:
Despite the heatsink above, you will still be able to freely install and remove the memory DIMMs, because there is just enough free room above them. Secondly, the new cooler can be installed only one way, as shown on the photo below:
If you try to turn it the other way (by 180 degrees), its left side will hit against the case rear panel or a fan hanging there, so that the mainboard with the installed cooler will not fit into the system case. If you turn the cooler by 90 degrees, you will no longer have any access to the top PCI Express slot on one side and have the cooler heatsink hit against the system power supply on the other. So, if you are using a stand alone graphics card, you don’t really have much choice.
The LED highlighting works perfectly fine, but I don’t know if overclockers will like it. In my subjective opinion, one-color highlighting looks better…
Besides, you cannot disable the highlighting, although it is hardly a drawback, maybe just a petty objection :)
The technical specifications of the new Thermaltake cooler are summed up in the table below:
New Thermaltake cooler was tested in two modes: in an open testbed when the mainboard sits horizontally on the desk and the cooler is installed vertically, and in a closed testbed with the mainboard in vertical position.
Our testbed was identical for all coolers and featured the following configuration:
Using the weakest cooling system of our today’s testing participants we managed to overclock our quad-core processor to 3.8GHz with the Vcore increased to 1.5125V in the mainboard BIOS. The monitoring utilities reported the core voltage setting a little bit lower than what was set in the mainboard BIOS: around 1.48~1.50V.
All tests were performed under Windows XP Professional Edition SP2. SpeedFan 4.34 Beta 44 was used to monitor the temperature of the CPU, reading it directly from the CPU core sensor:
The mainboard’s automatic fan speed management feature was disabled for the time of the tests in the mainboard BIOS. The CPU thermal throttling was controlled with the RightMark CPU Clock Utility version 2.35.0:
The CPU was heated up with OCCT (OverClock Checking Tool) version 2.0.0a in a 30-minute test with maximum CPU utilization, during which the system remained idle in the first 1 and last 4 minutes of the test:
I performed at least two cycles of tests and waited for approximately 20 minutes for the temperature inside the system case to stabilize during each test cycle. The stabilization period in an open testbed took about half the time. The maximum temperature of the hottest CPU core of the four in the two test cycles was considered the final result (if the difference was no bigger than 1°C – otherwise the test was performed at least once again). Despite the stabilization period, the result of the second test cycle was usually 0.5-1°C higher.
The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case with an electronic thermometer that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperatures varied between 25.5 ~ 26°C. It is used as a staring point on the diagrams. Note that the fan rotation speeds as shown in the diagrams are the average readings reported by SpeedFan, and not the official claimed fan specifications.
The noise level of each cooler was measured according to our traditional method described in the previous articles with the help of an electronic noise meter – CENTER-321. The subjectively comfortable noise level was considered 34.5dBA and is marked with a dotted line in the diagram. The ambient noise from the system case without the CPU cooler didn’t exceed 32.5dBA when measured at 1m distance.
We decided to compare the performance of our today’s hero – Thermaltake DuOrb - against that of ZEROtherm NV120 Premium cooler, which is priced similar to it. Besides, this ZEROtherm cooler also looks highly original and features blue LED highlighting, which may attract modding fans:
We tested this cooler only in one mode: with the fan rotating at ~1490RPM and generating moderate noise.
At first let’s check out the performance of Thermaltake DuOrb cooler with an overclocked processor in an open testbed:
Click to enlarge
And now let’s see how its rival copes with the same task:
Click to enlarge
As we see, ZEROtherm cooler won 8ºC from its rival (79ºC vs. 71ºC). With maximum workload the temperature of the CPU under Thermaltake DuOrb increased by another 3ºC inside a closed system case. With ZEROtherm NV120 Premium it increased by 4ºC. So, the final test results look as follows:
You can see from the chart that Thermaltake cooler yielded a lot to the leading super-cooler. Besides, in case of Thermaltake DuOrb we failed to raise the CPU frequency any higher even in an open testbed, where the temperature was relatively low. At the same time, with ZEROtherm NV120 Premium the CPU worked stably at 4020MHz and 1.6125V Vcore.
We measured the level of noise generated by our today’s testing participants from a 3cm, 1m and 3m distance. The results are given on the diagram below:
What can we say here? Thermaltake DuOrb turned out not that quiet at all, since its noise lies beyond subjective comfort zone. I believe the new cooler could use some fans with PWM support and maybe even with higher maximum rotation speed of ~2500RPM or even ~3000RPM. Of course, it would be ideal if they included a rotation speed controller with the bundled accessories, so that the user could find his or her best balance between rotation speed and noise level.
According to our today’s tests, Thermaltake DuOrb didn’t prove to be a super efficient air cooler and cannot be included into the Super-cooler group. Nevertheless, it will have its place in the cooling solutions market. It should not be regarded only as an efficient cooling solution for your CPU, memory and around-the-socket area. These are indeed important aspects, but not all the users and not all the time need maximum processor overclocking and maximum cooling efficiency of the CPU cooler. Such aspects as exterior looks, original design that can surprise your friends, even LED highlighting determine the buying preferences. And if the cooler is also efficient enough, it will certainly find its way into transparent system cases or open testbeds of computer stores attracting potential customers. The only really disappointing fact is an uncomfortable level of generated noise, even though we can’t say it is too high.