Thermaltake, in penance, made
a revised version of the Orb. Original version on the left, new one on the
right. The new one sells for the same price.
The new version, again shown
on the right in this picture, has a new clip, with a rather questionable
pinch-together-and-yank-up thingy on one end. It doesn't clamp on as ferociously
as the twist-lock Orbs, but it's fiddly, and doesn't cure the undersized-base
problem, and has still been responsible for Dreadful Occurrences in the
hands of the inexperienced.
Here's another Socket A no-no,
also from Thermaltake. The $USD17 TFCF009, also referred to as the "Harp"
after its unusual curvy fin profile (more of a lyre, really, but never mind),
continues the company's reputation for unusual retention mechanisms.
You hook the cooler onto the
socket with the hinging handle pointing upwards...
...and then swing the handle
down, so it clips under one side of the "harp", to lock the cooler in place.
On Socket 370, this design works
very well indeed, and does away with clip-fiddling just as well as the twist-lock
Orbs do. And the Harp's design means you can install it on motherboards
with tall capacitors right next to the CPU socket, because the base of the
cooler's no bigger than the socket itself. The Orb isn't a big cooler, but
it still sticks out a bit around the socket, and thus doesn't fit on some
jam-packed boards.
In fact, the only thing wrong
with the Harp for Socket 370 is that it comes in an Orb box, which still
tells you to twist the cooler on.
Image: enthusiastic amateur
with pipe wrench and determined expression.
Try installing a Harp on a Socket
A board, though, and you'll probably be sorry. It's got the over-clamping
problem of the Orb, but the hinging arm makes it even better at crushing
the CPU, or ripping hooks off the socket.
Again, you can make things better
by bending the clip-ends, and at least the Harp has a big enough base that
it engages the spacer dots properly. But it's still a dodgy proposition.
So what can you safely install
on a Socket A CPU?
A plain spring-clip cooler with
a normal-sized base. Like this one, for instance.
The whimsically named Cooler
Master DP5-6H51 is an utterly unrevolutionary cooler which happens to work
well on Socket A CPUs. It's your standard finned block of aluminium with
a decent-sized fan, and it costs $RM58.00, as befits a simple design like
this.
