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Well like so many of us out there I just wasn't quite happy with the good old chrome orb, so with the aid of a hack saw, some arctic silver, a socket 7 heatsink with a broken clip and I BIG ASS FAN I set out to make this thing work a little better than before.

 

 

This is how it started out

the main thing about the orb that I don't like is that it doesn't have and fins in the middle bit, of course this enables the fan to be set inside it and give it a lower profile but is not the best way to get the heat out. This is where my old socket 7 heatsink with the broken clip comes in

and here it is, the clip doesn't look broken but it is.

What I needed to do is to was to cut the sink into a shape that would fit onto the part that the original fan bolts onto.

A hack saw worked well for me but you might use anything that will cut through the metal. I cut it into an octagon because this was as close to a circle that I wanted to go. Basically the easiest way is to cut it into a 4cm x 4cm square and them trim the sides so that it sits neatly in the middle of the orb (after removing the little fan of course). You must make sure that it doesn't sit up on the rim around the center circle or else it wont conduct heat properly. I had to use a file to remove some of the bottom corners of the octagon so that it would sit down straight, see below. I also cut the tops off of the fins on the small octagon sink so that they were pretty much level with the top of the orb once it was mounted in place.

 

 

To mount the small heat sink in the orb first lap the bottom of the small sink and then spread on some arctic silver using the appropriate method (reasonable thin coat, don't touch with finger etc.) then sit it in place and press down firmly. Next apply some glue onto the outside edge of the small sink at the bottom where it joins up with the orb I used liquid nails because we had some but you could use anything that you think would work. You can see what I mean in the diagram below. Do it in a couple of places around the small sink to stick it good. Alternatively you could just use arctic silver thermal compound

The result of this is that there is more surface area on the heatsink and so more heat can be dissipated.

The 2 sinks fitted together

Here is a diagram that will show you what I mean exactly

 

Now for the fan.

As you can see below the fan on the orb is quite small, however has quite height airflow and is really quiet, so you must decide if you want quiet or better cooling.

The orb fan next to an 80mm case fan

 

QUIET

The orb fan will Do a reasonable job of cooling the modded heatsink and mounts quite easily, just screw the original screws into the fins that are now in the middle of the orb, below you can see this however I took the picture with the small sink out so you can see better

orb fan attached to small heatsink.

This gives you a finished product that looks a lot like this

 

COOLER

for best cooling all you need to Do is get an 80mm case fan with good airflow and stick it to the fins on the top of the orb. This isn't too hard as the supporting struts for the fan are usually on the side that blows air out. It ends up looking like this

this is louder but definitely cools a lot better.

 

As for results, after 10 minuets of running burnintest 2.1 by passmark software with CPU, mmx, 2d and 3d tests running 100% on my k63+450 @ 575 this is what I got