The Dragon Orb series are Thermaltake's
latest attempt to shake off the popular perception of their products as
good looking, but unexciting performers.
All of the Dragons look similar,
but the Dragon Orb 1 is all-aluminium, the Dragon Orb 2 has a double-radial-fin
base design, and the flagship Dragon Orb 3 has a hefty copper core. They
all share a new, noisy, top-mounted 7000RPM fan, which is available as an
after-market add-on for other Orbs. There's a quieter 4900RPM fan available
as an option.
The Dragon Orb 3 is 81mm tall
by 70mm wide (3.2 by 2.8 inches), which makes it as wide as a Super Orb,
but even taller. It weighs a lot more than any earlier Orb, too.
Looking at it from the side,
you can see why. The blue bottom section of the Dragon Orb 3 is half-full
of copper.
The blue body fins are made
of aluminium, as in the other Orbs, and are reasonably substantial. The
orange fan-unit fins, though, are thin and easy to bend, if you grab the
Orb by its top section. They're basically just decorative; I suppose they
serve some sort of air-channelling function, but they've got practically
no thermal connection to the base of the cooler.
Three screws retain the fan
unit, and removing it lets you see the block-fin-studded copper base. These
stubby little pegs don't have a lot of surface area, though, so a lot of
the heat still has to get out via the standard issue aluminium Orb fins
around the side of the cooler.
The Dragon Orb fan's sticker
power rating is 0.5 amps at 12 volts. It doesn't have a running current
draw quite that high, but it's still a better-than-5.5-watt air-mover, which
is pretty impressive.
If you ignore its funny looking
surround, this is a quite normal medium-high-power seven bladed full height
fan assembly, as seen in regular 60mm square fans. This fan by itself makes
the Dragon Orb a bit louder than the twin-fan Super Orbs.
The Dragon Orb clip is a three-hook-engagement
arrangement on both sides, and holds the cooler very firmly in place. It's
not a big problem to hook on, and there's a screwdriver notch for easier
attachment.
So, does the thing perform?
No, not really.
It managed 0.65°C/W when I tested
it.
Which makes it the best Thermaltake
cooler to date; better than the Super Orb. And it's likely to be good enough
for most overclockers. But it just isn't up there with the rest of the loud-fan,
copper-heat-sink brigade.
The Dragon Orb 3's selling for
$US35 to $US40, which puts it at the lower end of the copper cooler price
range. But there's a fair selection of cheaper aluminium coolers that perform
better. And, of course, the $US19.99 all-copper OCZ Gladiator is still out
there, too.
