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Crystal orb mount on motherboard easy? Blue orb or crystal orb?

S

Syborg1211

Diamond Member
I know the blue orb is made to fit on motherboards easy, how about the crystal? Are these things really much more efficient than the one on my radeon 8500 retail ati version? im thinking about replacing both the one on my motherboard and on my graphics card, but which to get? 2 crystals? 2 blue orbs? 1 of each and which for what?
 
They both fit the same holes. I picked the Blue Orb to match the heatsink on my Volcano 7 and the heatsinks on my Visiontek GeForce3 Ti 200 video card. I used it to replace the fan on the northbridge of my Asus A7V133.

 
I suppose I will have to base it on performance and noise... do they perform on par with each other or does one outshine the other in cooling?
 
More or less both are the same. Your northbridge doesn't get that hot, in most cases a mere heatsink without a fan will do for it. Both are made of aluminum and both have the same fan on them, so one won't be better over the other by any large ammount of performance. I'd base your choice between the two with which one looks more appealing to you and would look best in your system.
 
The crystal orb performs better, it's a never generation of this design. The blorb were the first (that I know of at least), then the Orange Orb (which performs marginally better than the blorb) and then the crystal orb.
The crystal orb also looks cooler...

I couldn't attach mine to the holes in my mobo though, but the holes on MSI K7T Pro2 seem to be placed in a non-standard way. But if it doesn't fit the holes well it isn't that bad since you get some (not-that-good) thermal tape with the cooler too.
 
Crystal Orb is the best out of those....nice copper base on it (you can see it once you lap it) when i attached mine to the mobo i had to clip off one of the pin tabs on the orb so it would fit center....looks great now...check my sig 😀
 
Does the crystal orb come with everything the blue orb does? aka thermalpaste, thermal tape, same pins, and 3pin to 4 pin converter? I'd like to know that if I get the crystal orb and it doesnt fit on my motherboard holes that I can just thermal tape it on as opposed to forcing it to go into the holes or something
 
Didn't realize that the Crystal Orb has a copper base. IMO that's much better. For the motherboard northbridge though it doesn't matter. Maybe for the video card CPU it will.
 
i agree....it really doesnt matter for the north bridge...i just had an extra (and thought it looked good) =)
 
I have a feeling it will help me overclock much more. In overclocking my XP1600 on my k7t266, I get a limit of around 152mhz fsb. Then I placed a fan over the notherbridge chipset and I could take it to 154mhz pretty stably. So I am assuming that even if I put some as3 on the original northbridge chipset I will be able to take it further. I just want to take it a step further with a different heatsink with a fan mounted on it already.
 
Don't expect much more, if you are getting stability issues at 152MHz and 154MHz then a heatsink on your northbridge won't help at all.
 
What's are you basing that on? Without the fan it wouldn't even load windows at 154, with the fan it loads windows and plays for an hour or two. It's not my processor overheating I've got a pal8045 on it and temps never breach 40.
 
Syborg, don't expect wonders but you'll probably get a few more mhz fsb. With the stock heatsink on the northbridge of my MSI K7T Pro2 RU it crashed after 9 hours running my 1600+ @ 1607 (153fsb), plus I couldn't oc my gfx-card as much (which supposedly stresses the northbridge). With a crystal orb I can get 153fsb 100% stable (haven't bothered trying how much more I can get, 1600Mhz was my goal) plus I can oc my gfx-card more.
 
Egrimm- If you ever have any spare time would you mind checking if you can take it any higher? I'd like to know the difference, our problems seem to be similar.

Another thing that might make a difference would be I am upgrading my pal8045 fan to a 48.5 cfm fan versus a 31, am adding 2 intakes fans to the 2 exhausts i have on my sx1030b, and am adding a crystal orb to my radeon 8500 along with 2 more case fans suspended over the card.
 
Well, I can say it's still not 100% stable on 1680Mhz (10.5x160). Haven't really tried between 153 and 160, but I'll try when I get the time to monitor the computer for stability for a full day or two (to see how many hours it is stable per fsb-setting).

I have a 46.5cfm Papst fan on my PAL8045 and two others as case fans (one intake, on exhaust), a slot-cooler and a generic 90mm fan as a card-cooler. I know it causes negative air-pressure and that I should spend some more time on setting it up properly, when I replaced a drive-cover with venting-holes with a solid one my case-temps fell 2C.
 
It's stable at 155fsb (1628Mhz), the corb has definitely helped. Will see if I can take it even further.
 
hey wa261, was checking out those case pics and have a tech question for ya:
How'd you get that 80mm fan mounted on that that sk6? looks real sharp!
(kickass rig, by the way - what's up w/ that power supply? :0)
 
FYI i wrote Thermal Take and asked them if the blue or crystal orbs will fit on my 8500 here is what they wrote back


"Hi,

Thank you for your recent inquiry on Thermaltake product.

Unfortunately, neither Blue Orb or Crystal Orb is applicable with ATI Radeon 8500 Video Card using the included clip mechanism.

We have found that those two unit will work only if you purchase a third party Epoxy Compound for installation.

Regards,

Service Dept."


 
correct....you have to epox them on....that is how i did both of mine



<< How'd you get that 80mm fan mounted on that that sk6? >>



i used an adapter (80mm / 60mm) superglued it on 😀
 
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