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By Kelly Lu (kellylu@onepc.net) - August 4, 2001

Infobox

What? Indigo Orb Product Page Who? Thermaltake Technology Co., Ltd. Home Page How much? $20 USD Thanks to HighSpeed PC

Now, here at OnePC, we have never really taken a look at specific heatsinks for your processor because our target audience is not those who take the opportunity to overclock their processors the moment they buy their hardware--of course, we don't discourage these people either. Since I'm doing a series of reviews on products required for setting up or upgrading to a Pentium 4 system, I thought that it was only appropriate to introduce you to one of the top Pentium 4 coolers on the market, the Indigo Orb from Thermaltake, provided by one of our affiliates, HighSpeed PC. Plus, I'm sure that there are many users out there who prefer to save a bunch and purchase OEM versions of the Pentium 4, which usually don't come with a stock heatsink, so an alternative heatsink such as the Indigo Orb becomes a necessity.

If you haven't read any of the other parts of this series, I suggest you do so as this "Road to the Pentium 4" series is intended to introduce you to products that are required by Pentium 4 processors that you might not know of before. I also suggest you read part 1 of this series to find out the details of what it's about.

Thermaltake is the company responsible for introducing one of the coolest-looking and equally high-performing cooling products around, their Golden Orb. They are also responsible for the Chrome Orb, which are being used by many owners of Athlon or Duron systems. The Indigo Orb that we're looking at today is very much similar, in terms of looks, to its other siblings, but, instead of being designed for a Socket 370 or Socket A processor, it is designed for a Socket 423 processor--the Pentium 4, to be specific.

Before I continue, I'd like to point out that this review of the Thermaltake Indigo Orb is intended only to introduce an alternative cooling solution for an OEM Pentium 4 processor, and not to show how well the product will handle overclocking situations! So, if you're looking for temperature readings accurate to the 4th decimal place with the processor running at 15X its rated speed, this review won't do it!

First Impressions
Upon first look, the Indigo Orb has an almost identical design to the other "orbs," with the same twirling-fin design, except for two differences. The first being the difference in color--the Indigo Orb, with its blue'ish color, is the most attractive heatsink that I've seen ever. The second difference lies in the fact that the actual heatsink is attached to a rectangular plate, which is intended to allow the cooler to be attached to the Pentium 4's new heatsink retention mechanism. Two parallel slits along the length of the plate are made to accommodate the clips for this retention mechanism, but are the cause of the biggest problem with this heatsink-explained later.

The heatsink boasts a huge fan that goes at 5500RPM, which is, relatively to the stock heatsinks that I've worked with before (I'm not an expert overclocker... sorry!), very high and pushes about 36CFM (cubic feet per minute), which is, again, relatively very high. I've seen other fans go at higher RPM rates just to push a lower CFM rate, but the Indigo Orb has a very high RPM to CFM ratio care of its larger fins on the fan.

As far as weight, the Indigo Orb is certainly one of the heavier aluminum heatsinks around, but that shouldn't be a problem for the new retention mechanism that the Pentium 4 calls for. Of course, it is still a lot lighter than the all--copper heatsinks that I've held before.

Installation of the Indigo Orb was, well... I hated it! The Indigo Orb and was designed to be installed with Intel's reference heatsink retention mechanism design that many of the earliest Pentium 4 motherboards utilized, so it came with the necessary clips needed for that type of an installation--and I'm sure it would have been virtually painless to install onto a motherboard with an Intel reference design retention mechanism. Now, however, many of the newer motherboards, including my DFI WT70, which I will review later on for this series and the Abit TH7, use a newer-type heatsink mechanism that is a lot different from Intel's design--even boards that originally used Intel's design, such as the Asus P4T, are switching to this newer clip design, I heard.

Put simply, the Indigo Orb is literally a chore to install onto one of these newer-type heatsink retention mechanisms. When I tried to install the heatsink, the clips that swung down and that were designed to clip in and hold down the heatsink were too wide to fit into the above-mentioned slits. Observe the picture below where it shows what I'm (trying) to explain (left: before shot--the clip doesn't fit; right: after--ah, finally, it fits):

In order to get the clips to fit into the slits, I had to widen the slits so that they would be wide enough for the clips by grinding through the aluminum--that took a whole 2 days and a very sore arm to do (I didn't have any power tools thin enough to do the job). It was only after all that work was done to the Indigo Orb that I could manage to get the clips to fit into the slits and, finally, get it installed.

I'm never going to do that again, no matter how fantastic the Indigo Orb looks after all the hard manual labour...

Powering Up
After all that effort in installing the Indigo Orb on any of my Pentium 4 motherboards, I was surprised to see the Indigo Orb do an excellent job in the performance department-a relief, actually, since I would have literally cut it apart with a power saw if it didn't work well. The fan does a great job of pushing a LOT of air through--I'm sure the fan on the Indigo Orb will make a great desk fan on a hot day.

Needless to say, the Indigo Orb does a great job of cooling my Pentium 4 1.7GHz. Unfortunately, I don't have quantitative numbers for you now, but I'll be sure to include some in the final part of this Road to the Pentium 4 series (still recovering from all the sawing).

As far as sound goes, I wasn't exactly impressed by the Indigo Orb, but I was not dissatisfied either. It was louder than all of my stock heatsinks that I had lying around, but only by a little bit, which is acceptable. No complaints here...

So, you've decided to buy an OEM version of the Pentium 4 and are in need of a cooler for it, since the OEM version doesn't include one. Well, if you can manage to find a motherboard that uses Intel's reference design heatsink retention mechanism, the Indigo Orb is the best choice for you because of its awesome cooling ability. If, however, you're using a motherboard that has a newer-type retention mechanism, such as the DFI WT70, Abit TH7 or even possibly the Asus P4T, I suggest you stay at least 10 meters away from it (even in the store), or else you'll be facing a very sore arm from having to saw it apart.

Special thanks to HighSpeed PC for providing us with this product!

Pros Very cool-looking Does a very good job of cooling the Pentium 4 processor Has a decent price Cons Installation woes; won't fit on all Pentium 4 motherboards (-3.5)

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