Review of Thermaltake DuOrb VGA Cooler

It’s been a long time since I’ve reviewed any VGA coolers, not just here but anywhere really.. Today for review I’ve got the Thermaltake DuOrb VGA cooler. The DuOrb is nice looking product, it’s copper and it has blue LEDs in it for a little color in your case. I’ve got a Diamond ATI 4870 1gig that has a stock cooler that works fairly well, but it can get rather loud under load so I had high hopes that the DuOrb could keep my card cool and quiet at the same time…  

Specifications:

DuOrb

Universal Design for NVIDIA & ATI Graphic card
- Compatible with : nVIDIA 9800/9600/8800/7900/7800/7600/6800 Series VGA Cards.
- Compatible with : ATi HD4870/4850/4830/3870/3850 & X1950/1900/1800 Series VGA Cards.

Ultimate cooling performance
- All copper construction:copper base & copper fin provided maximum cooling performance.
- 2 long length Heatpipe structure, removes heat from source via 2 different channels.
- Attached VGA memory & VRM chip sinks provide the total thermal solution for VGA cooling.

Mirror coating copper base to guarantee perfect contact between GPU and cooler.

Innovative DuOrb patented design
- Scurve fan blade design and 6-LED lights.
- Dual-pipe and heatsink design, bring you the whole new visual experience.
- Dual 80mm ultimate silent fan. Maximum cooling efficiency for quietness.
Compatibility:   
nVIDIA 9800 GTX/GT
nVIDIA 9600 GSO/FT
nVIDIA 8800 GT/GTS/GTX/Ultra
nVIDIA 7900 GS/GTX
nVIDIA 7800 GS/GT/GTX
nVIDIA 6800 GS/GT
ATi HD4870
ATi HD4850
ATi HD4830
ATi HD3870
ATi HD3850
ATi X1950 PRO/XT/XTX
ATi X1900 GT/XT/XTX
ATi X1800 GTO/XL/XT

Dimension: 180.5 (L) x 98.5 (W) x 30 (H)mm/7.11 (L)  x 3.88 (W) x 1.18 (H) in
Heatsink Material: Copper base & Copper Fin
Heatpipe: 6 mm x 2pcs
Fan Dimension: 80 x 15 mm x 2pcs
Fan Speed: 2500 RPM   
Max. Air Flow: 23.8 CFM
MTBF: 50000 Hours
Power Connector: 4-pin
Weight: 324 g

Price: USD : $49.99  

Unboxing:

So the Thermaltake DuOrb comes in a box as one might expect. The box has a window on the front, and the specs listed on the back.

Inside we find a plastic box that has the cooler in it and a smaller accessory box.

The DuOrb is a nice looking cooler, it’s basically all copper with heatpipes and two fans in it.

 

As far as thickness, it’s fairly thin really, but it will still take up the slot below your card.

Here’s the bottom of the cooler, and a close up of the base. The base is polished and appears to be flat.

Included in the accessory box is all you need to install the DuOrb on your video card. You want use all of the parts though, it all depends on which model you has as to what parts you’ll use.

Installation, Performance, Comparison

As I mentioned in the intro I’ve got a Diamond ATI Radeon 4870 1gig video card and here it is:

You can see the 4870 I have has a beefy heatpipe cooler on it, not those plastic shroud ones that are fairly common. So I was really curious as to how the DuOrb compares to this cooler.

According the instructions you’re supposed to remove the stock cooler, clean it up and then install the ram heatsinks:

The next two steps would be to install the brackets onto the cooler itself and then screw in the mounts to those.

The next step would be to apply thermal compound to the VGA core and then attach the DuOrb to the card. It’s easy to do, just set the cooler onto the core making sure the posts go through the holes in the card. Then you’ll put plastic washers onto the posts on the back of the card and then use the supplied nuts to secure the cooler to the card fully.

Here’s my cad with the cooler installed, you can see it’s much smaller than the stock cooler that was on the card.

Installation was easy but I did run into one small issue, the DuOrb hit the capacitors on my card so I had to bend it up just a little bit to fit correctly.

Here it is  installed in my system with my other 4870 video card, you can see there’s a big difference in the size of both coolers, but the DuOrb still takes up the slot below the card.

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..and here’s a shot of it powered on all lit up:

When I powered on my system I immediately noticed how much quieter it was, and a little brighter. Less noise though doesn’t mean much if the cooler doesn’t perform so onto the testing.

Ambient room temperature during my tests was 21C (+/- .3c)

To get load on my video card I used FurMark set at 1920×1080 resolution, Stability Test in Xtreme Burning Mode.

So here’s the results:

The DuOrb is quiet but not that great at keeping my 4870 cool. Apparently the heatpipe cooler form Diamond is a good one. 90C is a safe temperature, but the idea here is too keep the card as cool as possible or at least that’s what I want in a cooler.

If you wanted to keep your system quiet and you don’t run your card at load a  lot or overclock then maybe you might want this cooler, but if your aim at all is to keep the temps down then I don’t think you’ll want this one at all.

After seeing those temps I wasn’t even going to try to overclock my card with the DuOrb in place, and I don’t think anyone else would attempt it either.

Conclusion:
The Thermaltake DuOrb VGA cooler doesn’t perform very well, at least on my card and compared to the stock heatpipe cooler of my Diamond Radeon ATI 4870.

For me the performance just isn’t that good. Yes it’s quiet and it looks good but it’s just not that good at cooling… As they say, looks aren’t everything…

Pros:
+Quiet
+Easy install
+Well made

Cons:
-Performance is not the greatest
-Had to bend it to fit on card

Ratings
Overall: 3 out of 5
Performance: 3 out of 5
Aesthetic: 4 out of 5
Build Quality: 4 out of 5

Disclosure: This product was given to Bona Fide Reviews for review by the company for review purposes only, and is not considered by us as payment for the review, we do not, and never will, accept payment from companies to review their products.

Tagged as: 4870, ATI, Cooler, Diamond, DuOrb, Radeon, Review, thermaltake, VGA