Orbs...are they worth it?

I am new. (yay!) and I had an interesting thought:

Say I have a Compaq PC (1.4 AMD) and it has stock everything. SHould I go with and Orb for looks or is it easily out-matched by another fan. Basically...are Orbs cool looking and effective?

Anyother fan but an orb.......... and make sure its for the processor!

Orbs blow and not in the good way.

Absolutely correct. As far as CPUs go, orbs do nothing but look cool. I bought an orb for my tbird back when I knew just enough to be dangerous, and I've regretted it ever since (until I went to watercooling, that is).

If you can find one, I'd recommend a Millenium Glaciator. It's almost as effective as the Glaciator 2, and will probably be significantly cheaper.

I don't like Orbs, they look nice, but thats about it.
If its for a chipset cooler or something, they should do nicely I think.

For a CPU, Orbs really suck... but as far as buying a chipset/gpu HSF is concerned, you could do worse. I'd still prefer hacking up something yourself, but a crystal orb on a vidcard is a start at least.

i got crystal orb on mx440, allowed me to go from 300mhz core to 325. 25mhz more for £10 im happy enough i guess, got blue orb on chipset but not tested as yet.

Dragon Orb 3 isn't THAT bad...but there are MANY MANY heatsinks that are:

1) lighter
2) better performing
3) more efficient
or
4) all of the above

The orb design is an old and inefficient design, lacking surface area, and once you combine that with copper, all you get is a really heavy (640 grams!) and inefficient design. At 640 grams, it's heavier than a Glaciator II, which easily outperforms it with a much quieter fan. If you want a 6 lug mount, get an AX7, which also offers better cooling at quieter levels and offers room to grow if you want to go all out loud. If you want a lighter heatsink, go for an Arkua AlCu combo, or one of the many skived options that are available. If you want something that's BIG BIG that has thermal capacity to spare, keeping the speed of the rise of temperature down if the fan dies, go for a Swiftech MCX462.

Hrm...that's about the only reason I can think of for anyone wanting a DOrb 3: if you seriously want pure thermal capacity as a saftey mechanism on a socket 370 board or a socket A board that doesn't fit a Swiftech. And even then, something like an MCXC370 might do the job as well or better in a dead fan situation.

No, I don't feel a need to defend Thermaltake's products, but I really hate statements like "Orbs suck!" My last heatsinks have been, in order: a Global WIN TAK68 @ ~3000 RPM, a Dr. Thermal TI-V77L @ 3000 RPM, a Glaciator I @ ~3000 RPM, a Swiftech MCXC370 w/ Zalman 92mm @ ~2000 RPM, a Zalman 3100 w/ 2 x Zalman 92mm @ ~2000 RPM, a Mini Copper Orb, a Thermoengine, a Taisol, a...small green heatsink that was terrible but kept my Celeron 400@500 at a decent temp...

Man, I need more heatsinks...

Welcome to the forums Mico .Also exactly right, I dont like people saying that "orbs suck" either as if you remember they were made for a certain wattage and size cpu...and those with heatplates like the celeron and k6-2 and later on the p3 and low end athlons. Back when the orbs were new they were HALF the price of the best of the best of the best alpha's performed almost exactly the same and were a huge hit. I mean really, stick on one of those old small alpha heatsinks without the copper inlay and see how much better you will get. Probably not any better at all or if you do its only a 1C or so. And i found a super orb for like 4~5 bucks new and hey it will cool better than stock on a 1.4ghz tbird. Maybe not much better but hey for 5 bucks new if your not overclocking its sure cheap. Oh and 1.4ghz tbird with a super orb i woulnd overclock.

Mico said:

Basically...are Orbs cool looking and effective?

Click to expand...

My 2 cents:

No, and... no.