The product

The Max Orb comes packaged in a black and red retail cardboard box with poorly translated English describing its key points. On the sides you’ll find diagrams explaining how the heatpipe and heatsink blades work together getting the heat away from your core.

At the top you find a plastic window which shows you one corner of the flower-like fins that is the Max Orb. The plastic forms part of the clamshell that holds all of the bits and pieces with the Orb. Fortunately, it’s held together with a single piece of tape, rather than welded shut meaning my gas axe can stay in the drawer.

Once opened, you’ll find an AM2 backing plate, a universal retention frame, a sachet of thermal grease, a load of screws and nuts, and the manual.

The manual comes in all languages and isn’t that helpful as it reads as if translated by Google.

The Max Orb itself is circular in design and is just larger than a CD/DVD. It looks big and should be able to dissipate a lot of heat as a result. The base of the cooler is copper yet coloured silver and so are the 6 heatpipes that direct heat to different places. As the fins aren’t in direct contact with the bottom of the heatsink, the heatpipes also provide the Max Orb with structural strength and raise the fins above any conflicting motherboard components.

Opposite to where the heatpipes connect with the fins, you’ll find a small knob which controls the speed at which the non-standard 110mm fan rotates at; between 1300 to 2000 RPM. It seems odd that the speed knob is built into the cooler as it means that you can’t easily change the speed on the fly. However, it is nice to be able to manually set the cooler to the lowest speed that your PC will work at.

The bottom of the heatsink is protected by a small piece of clear plastic which when removed shows the shiny surface beneath. It’s quite well lapped but there are small visible machine marks present. It’s flat and should make for good contact with your core.

The logo on the fans spindle looks a little dated and not the usual futuristic font/style that most manufactures go for. That said you won’t be able to read/see it when the fan is rotating.

The ideal behind having a circular setup for the heatsink fins is to all air to flow in several different directions rather than just one (as with a normal, basic heatsink). This should increase air turbulence and hence make sure that the most amount of heat is taken away from the cooler. The heatpipes are key to this design as they have to evenly ‘load’ the fins with heat so that one side isn’t hotter than the other.

To enable this cooler to be used on several different motherboards, the fins of the cooler are raised to prevent them from conflicting with any other surface components that may be present. There is also the universal retention frame which can be used with lGA775, AM2, 939 and 754. The 939 and 754 installation methods require the stock backplate which the retention frame screws to. The AM2 method uses the included backplate which means that you’ll have to remove your motherboard to install it. If you have an LGA775 motherboard, then you simply use the included ‘push pin modules’ which use the screw holes on the motherboard.

The raised fins and large fan mean that not only will your CPU be nice and frosty, but airflow will be created over your RAM and PWM area which can only be a good thing.

The fins themselves on the cooler aren’t very sturdy and are quite thin to provide a larger surface air for heat to escape from. They easily get distorted from their intended shape/position and as such, the cooler is quite delicate.