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[Silverstrand]

Snip: "With a 120mm fan spinning at about 1700 RPM the Blue Orb is designed to stay quite. The large heatsink would normally be used to make up for the lack of cooling provided by a low RPM fan, but with a 120mm fan pushing up to 77 CFM the heatsink is more there to cope with overclocking and high wattage CPUs than to help out the fan."

Link: http://www.xyzcomputing.com/index.ph...sk=view&id=525

[The Modfather]

Looks cool...

It's thermaltake...

hence, it must suck (unless it's SUPPOSED to suck, in which case it blows).

[unholy]

To be honest its like a Zalman Shadow.

[Silverstrand]

Yet the fact that thermaltake's orbs have been around since 2000 (the first use of an orb was by hp in 1999) would say that they obviously work great, otherwise the line would have been discontinued by now.

[The Modfather]

The fact that HP uses them doesn't say anything, considering the amount of propriatary hardware in HP (and many other prebuild) systems. Their time in existance doesn't say anything either. Ford made the Pinto for a long time, Microsoft still makes Windows.

[XhArD]

Whether Windows works or not isn't the point though, the point is that there aren't very many "user-friendly" alternative OS'. With the majority of home computers running Windows, people don't want to have to learn Linux if they can just use Windows. If it dies and they aren't exactly computer savvy, they will pay some ripoff artist to do a 1 hour job, costing them $150. People like it that way In the case of the orb, why keep manufacturing them if they don't work pretty well, considering the huge number of alternative coolers available?