Yesterday I received a nice big fedex bag, containing new goodies direct from ThermalTake in Taiwan. This is one of the offerings, the Crystal Orb (the other being the ram cooler), a similar product to the Blue Orb, but in a fetching shiny chrome colour. The box (image 1, 2) claims the cooler has a copper base, and is designed for "BGA Chipset" (I think they mean VGA). The stats as listed on the box are as follows:

Fan Dimension: 50x50x15 mm Fan Speed: 5500 RPM Max. Air Flow: 12.4 CFM Noise: 26.4dBA Lift (Life?) Time: 50,000 Hours

You can read the other voltage ratings etc in image 2.

The orb comes with a great bag of goodies (image 3,4)- a 3pin to 4pin power adapter in case you have no free headers, some heat transfer compound (not arctic silver, but it does the job), some frag tape and pushpins. Oooh, and a little bag too! ;D. Good show from thermaltake for providing all this stuff with the orb.

We weren't sure how to test this orb - testing CPU fans is easy you just plug it in and monitor the temps... but with this, we can't do that. So we decided to butcher carlos' ATI Radeon card, removing the pathetic stock heatsink/fan and replacing it with the tasty looking crystal orb. Carl's been trying to overclock his radeon in the past few days, and he'd hit a maximum level with the normal cooling on the card. (There are also 2 80mm fans blowing onto the card ;D so it has plenty of airflow).

The previous maximum with normal cooling was

gpu 184Mhz ram 184Mhz

The maximum with the crystal orb is

gpu 205Mhz ram 205Mhz

In case you haven't guessed, the numbers are locked equal...

Rather than leave it at that, we may as well go through the steps required to install a crystal orb onto your card, be it a radeon, geforce, or s3 virge ;D.
It really is an easy process. The most difficult (well, scary) part is removing the old heatsink from the card, because it involves prising it off with quite considerable force and a screwdriver. Some people put the card in the freezer for a few hours to break the epoxy glue used to stick it to the gpu, but I haven't bothered the 2 times I've done it. Simply put the flat end of a flat-headed screwdriver under the side of the heatsink and pry it upwards fairly gently. Increase the pressure, but be careful not to damage the board, and the heatsink will ping off the board (sometimes quite violently). This leaves you with a gpu covered in epoxy residue, so scrape it off with the screwdriver then clean it with some alcohol (no, not that old vodka, some cleaning alcohol) to prepare it for the new heatsink.

How you attach the new sink depends on the card. If it has pushpin holes, you can use the pushpins that thermaltake provide with their crystal and blue orbs to secure it. This also means you can use thermal paste (arctic silver or what-have-you) between the gpu and heatsink, giving better contact. If your card does not have holes, or they are in the wrong place, you will have to use the heat-transfer tape instead ("frag tape"), which thermaltake also provide in the packages (gawd bless em). It's just like double sided tape - peel off one side and stick it to the gpu, then when its really secure peel off the other plastic coating and stick on the heatsink.
As you can see in image 5 the base is fairly scratched on our model. Well, some of that was my fault (mrplow) cos i am stupid, but some was there already. However, the base has obviously been polished well, so I would assume these scratches are accidental and not normal...
Be sure to leave clearance for the card to get into the AGP/PCI slot without hitting anything (unlike we did, and had to fiddle about with it - luckily the tape is forgiving and you can try a few times). Once it's all secure, plug everything back together and be sure to plug in the fan on the orb. Then fire the beast up and overclock that mother ;D.

As you can proably tell, installing one of these orbs is a piece of cake, and the benefits were pretty good - an extra 21Mhz on carl's radeon - that means more 3dMark points, and as we all know, points mean prizes... the crystal orb gets a big thumbs up from us, for looking great and cooling to match.


ahahaha, you're 'avin a larf mate! call that a heatsink?

mrplow, 16-10-01.