Product: Thermaltake DuOrb
Wibble www.thermaltake.com

DESPITE THE price and performance improvements on the water cooling front - not to mention fewer leaks, quite literally - classic air cooling technologies still fight for their place under the sun.

Thermaltake itself has strong liquid cooler presence, yet its fans do have quite a few fans around - remember the V1 "Chinese Fan" we reviewed last year? The newest offering, DuOrb CPU (they got one for the GPUs too), is under our scrutiny this time.

No, this pretty contraption is not a Disneyland Mickey Mouse top hat - we got two fans here in a single heatsink, and yes they are both round.

On a serious note, this innovative arrangement goes a level above usual CPU heat sinks not just by increasing the total heat sink fin area for air circulation, but also positioning the fans where the extra airflow - after the air passes by those fins - where it matters most. You guessed it right: memory, North Bridge and CPU VRM blocks.

The box contains both LGA775 and AM2 mounting kits, as usual, but in both cases you need to watch the direction of mounting, according to the Thermaltake box - the Red-light fan half should be above the memory and chipset, while the Blue-light half is on top of the CPU and VRMs. In reality, it shouldn't matter that much since DuOrb's both fans are identical 80 mm 2,000 rpm units.

The total of six copper heatpipes, three for each half, are of varying lengths, depending on whether they curl up to the inner aluminum rings, or the outer copper rings - yeah, this heatsink is an alluminium - copper combo.

We ran the fan on the most recent testing setup: Intel's XeonUP 3360, essentially a quad core Yorkfield repackaged for mini-servers, on the MSI X48 Platinum mobo. The configuration was 3.33 GHz CPU on FSB1667 with dual-channel DDR3-1667 courtesy of SuperTalent ProjectX DIMM pair. The mounting took just over five minutes on the LGA775 socket.

The room was set at the usual Singapore aircon-off winter temperature of " freezing" 29 deg Celsius in the evening, not exactly helping the air-cooled computers.

We compared the BIOS hardware monitor temperature vs Coolermaster Hyper212 heat sink, as well as the old noisy 4,000 rpm generic Intel Performance Heat Sink Fan from the Presler Pentium Extreme days.

This was now an updated mobo, with BIOS 2.0 and a bit more overclocking headroom. So, how were the readings then? Well, the Intel oldie - OK, Taiwanese fan purchased by Intel in gazillion quantities - gave 35C CPU and 32C mobo heat temperatures despite the jet take-off rpm noise, while the much quieter 1,900 rpm Coolermaster with its 120mm fan still kept a relatively cool 38C CPU / 34C mainboard. The problem with Hyper 212 is that the fan blows in parallel to the board, not onto the mobo, so there is no extra board airflow benefit. Of course, for that performance the Coolermaster is barely audible, while the old Intel reference fan starting could make you think it's a demolition crew suddenly attacking your home with a concrete pulveriser.

Now our "diving goggles" baby, DuOrb - how did it do? The 36 deg C CPU temperature is a bit above the Intel one, but still lower than the Hyper 212. Get ready for the mobo temperature - down to 30C ! Either the temp sensor was a bit imprecise, or this fan gets the board as cool as the surrounding environment in that (deliberately, it's extreme testing!) awfully hot test room.

And, yeah, it was just about as noisy or silent as the Hyper 212, a tad more audible, I'd say for its 100 more rpm.

In summary, a nice looking and even better performing fan. It's on a par with the best Zalman and Cooler Master offerings, but also cools the surrounding sufficiently enough to avoid a need for additional memory and VRM fans at least - as for the North Bridge,we'd still recommend a separate fan if you're doing some FSB and memory overclocking there.

The next step? Well, they got Mickey Mouse's ears, now's the time for the rest of the face. We suggest a triple-fan "Mickey Mouse" lookalike with, say, nine heat pipes total - it could now cover memory, VRMs and North Bridge equally well with the extra airflow, while pushing the CPU temperature another few degrees down. And, oh yes, allow variable fan speed to about 2,800 rpm for those who want extra performance for extra noise.

Good Superb looks, dual-colour lights for the geeks, good performance, low height
Bad More fan speed flexibility would give more performance and noise options
Ugly Well, shape-wise, it's just "Mickey" out of "Mickey Mouse " for an otherwise great heat sink; add another fan to be complete

Bartender's Verdict