Introduction
Introduction
Thermaltake is one of the biggest names in cooling, and very few overclockers will be oblivious to their innovative (but often under-performing) orb range of coolers. In this round-up we are going to test almost the entire range of Thermaltake CPU coolers, including the Mini Copper ORB, the brand new Dragon Orb 3, as well as all of their more conventional Volcano range of Heatsinks, including the Volcano 2, 5, 6Cu and 6Cu+.
Test Setup
I opted for my usual HSF review system, an Athlon 1.4GHz, since it offers more than a challenge to most coolers. The full specs are:
- AMD Athlon 1.33GHz Processor @ 1.4GHz
- 256MB Cas 2 DDR RAM
- IBM Deskstar 60GXP 20 GB
- Asus A7A266 Mobo
- 19" Sony Multiscan GDM-400PS Monitor
- Win98
- Eclipse ATX Midi Black Case
In all tests, the thermal compound used was Arctic Silver II. All temperatures were taken using a thermal probe. Idle temperature was measured by allowing windows to boot up, and leaving the PC idle until the temperature stopped fluctuating. To measure the temperatures at full load, I used Genome @ home and allowed the CPU to run at full 100% load for 15 minutes. This was sufficient to bring the CPU to its maximum temperature under each cooler. All heat sinks were subjected to the same test conditions (Same Genome @ Home work unit, same ambient temperature of 25°C).
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