Question for unhappy Blue Orb owners

[ptcg]

I was thinking about placing an order for these custom heatsinks from where I work and I want to see what the market is like for them first.

I want to make these to replace the heatsink on the Blue Orb coolers because of these reasons:

1) The heat sinks are made of two pieces pressed together. If you hold one up to a light, you can see gaps between the pieces all around.
2) As everyone already knows, the bottom of these heat sinks are no where near flat.
3) The mounting holes are too close together, so you cannot mount it properly.

All these things add up to poor heat transfer and poor cooling.

The one I propose to make would be:

1) Machined from one solid piece of aluminum for better heat transfer to the cooling fins.
2) 3/4" tall and 2" square
3) The fins would be 1/16" thick and spaced 1/16" apart
4) The bottom would be flat and true
5) The mounting holes would be the right space apart for proper mounting
6) The three holes in the center would accomodate the fan from a Blue orb (Just take the fan off your Blorb, put it in the new heatsink & you're ready to go)

The only problem I forsee is the price. There is a setup charge($300+), a tooling cost($200+), Materials, etc...
I'm seeing them cost about $5-10 each... I know the Blorb is only $8, but if enough people want these, I can get a lower price (I need to haggle with my boss a bit)

So let me know if you:

1) Would be interested enough to buy 1 or more.
2) Have any suggestions for changes in the design (I'm always open to improvements)
3) The most you would pay for this

Thanks!

[Sonny]

1. Yes but I am cheap;

2. A few suggestions;

a. Keep as close to the fin orientation of the BOrb but make it twice as tall;
b. Copper not aluminum.
c. Base should be 2mm thick & absolutely no holes thru it. Mounting blocks for the fan.
d. I prefer no mounting brackets for it. Spring loaded push pins do not have enough pressure for good heat transfer. Thermal epoxy IMHO is the only way to mount these small HSFs. That's what I did & it does perform better.
e. How much would I pay? Well I believe my ideas are worth something so I would ask for the products to be sent to me & will do R&D work for it. I know your company can make money if you sell it commercially. Did I mention that I am cheap?:beer:

[ptcg]

With the equipment I have available, I can't make the fins the same as the blorb. The need to be cut using a slotting saw & I feel they would most likely bend or break off if made too thin (I'll have torun a few test pieces to be sure)

I did want to use copper instead of aluminum, but that would cost a fortune! A solid bar of copper, 6ft long is over $300 alone!

As far as making it twice as tall, I could do that easily, but I wanted to make it roughly the same size for people using it as a GPU cooler with little room between cards.

The base would be about the 2mm thick, I could make standoffs for mounting the fan so the bottom would be completely flat with no holes.. let me redraw the pict a bit.

I think I might make two designs, one with mounting hole, and one without (I'll post 2 pix for them), this wouldn't alter the price at all & it would keep everyone happy...

back to the drawing board!

[Sklathill]

You do realize that Thermaltake does have the Orange Orb (a one-piece aluminum design) and the Crystal Orb (a nickel plated copper design) right? I've seen a couple of reviews Orange orb that show it as performing better, but I've yet to see a review of the Crystal Orb...

[[PCA]Pheonix]

I've seen a review somewhere, they said it was good (the chrome orb) but they needed to get rid of the silly things over the fans blades

[ptcg]

No, I didn't know they had the orange orb... I just looked it up, but I can't seem to find a very good pict of it.. (Only from the top/down view). It's one piece huh? hmmm... There goes that idea..

I've seen the chrome orb, and I agree, they need to remove those pieces on top, covering the fan.

[Arkaine23]

I lapped a 999 fine silver coin and stuck it where the old blorb base was. Coin was about $5. Lapping took under 2 hours. I used my stock gpu heatsink's fan because it spins 2000 rpms faster than the blorb's fan.

Silversinksam came up with this silver orb first, to give credit where credit is due.

I got lazy, and didn't cut the coin to size... I split the blorb's fin ring instead and bent it just slightly out of shape to accomodate the coin. The interface between base and fin ring is not 100%, but its close. I put a thin layer of ASII on the inside of the fin ring before setting the coin in place to help compensate for this. Since I lost the tabs for mounting the blorb when I tossed the original base, I just used ASII and two dots of superglue to stick this Slorb in place. Even with these short-cuts/sloppy craftsmanship, my slorb cools my gpu 4 or 5 degrees cooler than the standard blorb. I was able to OC 30 Mhz on my gpu core more than with the blorb, and it goes even higher than that, but drops my 3dmark score for instability.

Anyone who doesn't mind a little lapping could improve a blorb in this way very cheaply... ASII, superglue, sandpaper, silver coin.

I'd buy a remade blorb fin ring, especially if it had taller fins or was made of copper or silver, if somebody made one.

[Silversinksam]

Im in total agreement with Sonny,

Its gotta be copper.... $300 for a 6 foot bar isnt horrible as its all relative to the improvement over Aluminim. The way I see it, a 14"x4"x 3mm sheet of Silver costs me roughly the same as a 6' section of copper.

One other design improvement would be to have small fins on the bottom instead of it being flat.

PS Sonny why do you recomend a 2mm base....The Blue Orb has a base thats exactly 3mm (usually a warped 3mm :) )


http://members.home.net/broadbandland/Orb/crapbaseandsilverbase.jpg

[Sonny]

Originally posted by Silversinksam
Sonny why do you recomend a 2mm base....The Blue Orb has a base thats exactly 3mmIt's based more on gut feel not science. You see my intention for this cooler was not for anything heavy duty like a GPU but on the NorthBridge. The idea was that to have a faster "thermal shift", yes I'm inventing terms to better express myself:cool:, from hot to cold with the thinner base. Copper stores heat longer than Aluminum so a thicker base would need a stronger fan. NorthBridges do not really generate a lot of heat so this kind of headroom wouldnt even come into play. A thinner base would be a more elegant solution than the norm for my particular needs. Now I understand that this would probably lead to BAD cooling for high heat output chips but getting the best would probably mean customized parts not 1 size fit all HSF.

I thought this thread died last November:eh?:

[RangerJoe]

why dont you just forget the crappy blueorb, and get a crystal orb....much better..and its already copper

[Brant]

Why dont you forget the orb design all by it self. The fins should be in the middle of the heatsink like other heatsinks. On the orbs the heat has to travel through the base to the fins. It doesnt have a direct path. It is more efficent to put the fins where the heat is.

[The Overclocker]

bad news:

there is already the orange orb which fixes the round bottem and fins not fitting

and a better crystal orb which is copper.

oh yeh, and orbs are crap designes, the hottest part has no fins, if you want to make a heatsink look at designes like the thermo engine

[The Overclocker]

Originally posted by ptcg
With the equipment I have available, I can't make the fins the same as the blorb. The need to be cut using a slotting saw & I feel they would most likely bend or break off if made too thin (I'll have torun a few test pieces to be sure)

I did want to use copper instead of aluminum, but that would cost a fortune! A solid bar of copper, 6ft long is over $300 alone!

As far as making it twice as tall, I could do that easily, but I wanted to make it roughly the same size for people using it as a GPU cooler with little room between cards.

The base would be about the 2mm thick, I could make standoffs for mounting the fan so the bottom would be completely flat with no holes.. let me redraw the pict a bit.

I think I might make two designs, one with mounting hole, and one without (I'll post 2 pix for them), this wouldn't alter the price at all & it would keep everyone happy...

back to the drawing board!

$300 for 6ft? where are you buying it from, have a look at onlinemetals.com

[ptcg]

Check the diameter of the blorb, then check the price for a 6ft bar of copper that diameter.. I don't have the type of equipment needed for forging or molding the copper to the blorb shape.. I would have to start with a solid piece & mill the fins, etc.. solid copper is a lot of money.. I scrapped this idea anyway.. I'm working on a different design altogether.. I wanted to remake the blorb basically the same size for space-saving purposes, but I have plenty of room near the northbridge & the PCI slot next to my AGP video is empty, so I'm going with a larger, aluminum HSF.. I can get the aluminum free (from a friend also in the machineshop business), so I figured I make a larger, taller HSF for the northbridge & I'm also going to make a 4" x 4" x 1"(approx) heatsink with a 60MM fan for the video (to cover the GPU and memory all in one shot)

I'll post info on my website as I make some progress.