Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler Review

Conclusion

There is no getting around it; the DuOrb is one short, fat and yet quiet cooler. At first we likened it to a mythological Tolkien Dwarf, that is also short, yet strong; but in retrospect that may not be the best analogy as this bad boy may be short but it is not loud and boisterous as dwarves are portrayed. The final nail in the coffin of that analogy came when we plugged in the DuOrb for the first time, and yes it may be short and fat like a dwarf but it certainly isn't ugly like one either.

Thermaltake certainly made this unit pretty and we are not arguing that it isn’t, but when beauty causes it to be less effective as a working cooler that is when things begin to cross a thin red line. A cooler doesn’t have to be ugly but when the chips are down, the only thing that really matters is its ability to cool your CPU. In its present iteration the DuOrb is a very good dual core cooler, and one could go as far as to say that it performs adequately when it comes to cooling stock speed quads. However, when the thermal loads start to rise this cooler quickly becomes ineffective.

In the end the usefulness of this cooler all comes down to what you are planning to use it for. If you want a handsome looking system that will only run at stock speed, you could do a lot worse than the DuOrb. The same goes for anyone building a HTPC system since this short cooler would certainly not have a problem with height restricted computer cases, but before you buy make sure that the case has enough length to handle this guy (remember it was nearly the full length of our Gigabyte DS4 ATX motherboard). If you’re building a lanparty system with a clear window to show off to your friends this also would be a good choice. Heck anyone running a dual core CPU would probably be happy with this cooler; but for everyone else, your 65 hard earned dollars would be better spent elsewhere. Hopefully in a revision or three the bugs will worked out of the DuOrb design and then we will have a true contender for the quad core CPU cooler crown.


Pros:

- Dual fans
- Good Dual Core cooling
- 6 Heatpipe design
- Good Packaging
- Red & blue LEDs

Cons:

- Not all heatpipes have enough fins on them to be effective
- Quirky installation
- Less than optimal Quad core performance
- Price
- Not everyone wants a red & blue glow coming from their system