The
Golden Orb was, um, "inspired", by Hewlett-Packard's hefty Turbocooler,
which has now evolved into the much smaller, but hard to find in the retail
channel, Agilent
Arcticooler.
The basic idea - radial fins
around a central fan - lets these round coolers work better than you'd think,
considering their unexciting fin area and fan power. But they're not superpowered
overclockers' specials; they're pretty, affordable, better-than-stock medium-range
units. The Golden Orb only costs $RM60.00 delivered.
This Orb uses the classic twist-lock
Thermaltake clip, in which you very easily hook the retention gizmo onto
your socket, and then turn the cooler anticlockwise to lock it in place.
The twist-on design proved to be
a complete disaster with Socket A CPUs, which stand a little higher and
are a lot more fragile than Socket 370 chips. Thermaltake released a short-lived
Golden Orb with a less than fabulous conventional clip design, then the
Chrome Orb which I'll get to in a moment. The twist-on clip still lives,
though; it's fine for Intel CPUs.
The Golden Orb managed 0.8°C/W -
better than a stock Intel cooler's likely to manage, but nothing to write
home about.
