Thermaltake MaxOrb Cooler

What you get

The MaxOrb like its predecessors, is designed to fit all currently offered platforms.  Namely all LGA775 setups (Prescotts all the way up to the Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Extreme) as well as AMD socket AM2, 939 and 754 processors.  To do this, the Thermaltake MaxOrb comes with a variety of mounting hardware in addition to an easy to understand manual and a blister pack of silicon thermal goop.

One big honk'n sink!

Thermaltake's MaxOrb is huge.  It all but dwarfs my watch as you can see below with its 143mm diameter fin array and 94mm of height.  Let me get this out of the way right off.  Many supersized heatsinks we've seen in the past presented with major compatibility problems.  While the Tt MaxOrb is huge, its elevated shelf design keeps the main cooling assembly above any capacitors on mainboard components.  We fit the MaxOrb on a number of boards here in the shop and saw no indication or likelihood of a compatibility issue.

Starting our tour, we see that the base is connected to this elevated platform by means of six silver colored copper heatpipes that conduct heat up from the base to the radial fin array.  In the second pic below, notice how the heatpipes bend to create a shelf that the convection fins attach to.  This allows for massive amounts of surface area for heat to be conducted to from the heatpipes before dissipating into the air.

Opposite the heatpipe angle, we found an onboard rheostat.  Now coolers have certainly grown when you can have a rheo made as part of a heatsink.  This will be a subjective item liked by some and disliked by others.  Yes, if the fan speed control is inside your case you have to open your case to get at it.  However, I like to look at this as allowing me to fine tune the amount of air flow (and noise) created by using it in conjunction with a mainboard's fan control either in the BIOS or bundled software.  Not all boards have this feature but we can all accept that the majority of current boards this cooler fits do.

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