The only one that is worth a crap is that giant copper Zalman one.

The orb one and the pin one are junk as far as cooling performance goes.

Thanks for your 2 cents. I think it’s more about where did they come out with these designs and what are the meanings ? Some are just really out there. Pieces of art. It’s like art work. Some like it some don’t. Others want to talk about it.

Intel486dx33 wrote:

Thanks for your 2 cents. I think it’s more about where did they come out with these designs and what are the meanings ? Some are just really out there. Pieces of art. It’s like art work. Some like it some don’t. Others want to talk about it.

It's just that the form over function thing is one of my pet peeves. Coolers back then pretty much all sucked until they came out with the thin-fin designs.

I have some coolers that I will post in this thread... those two besides the Zalman just irk me really bad since I actually wasted money on one of the pin design ones and we sold those orb ones when I worked at a computer store back in the day. Sure they looked cool, but they were worthless as coolers.

How does the Zalman Orm mechanism work? Thermaltakes Golden orb ripoff had a turn to secure action - you can just imagine what it did to Coppermine/Duron/Athlon bare flip chip die cores.

Your right, That Thermaltake orb is laud but it does keep the CPU functioning. I never took a heat gun to it to see how hot it gets.
I am a not going to debate quality or function. I would just like to see photos of strange CPU fans.

Apart from the various Alphas, Swiftechs and Zalmans I also have this beauty:

What little I can find out about it is that its a "Coolermaster HHC-L51".
A very early, early 2000's, heatpipe cooler.
And it works really well !
Easilly keeps my Athlon 1200C in check.

Nothing special, but probably quite unique...
That S7 cooler got warm even with the fan. I didn't like that.

So I decided to exchange the made-in-taiwan fan (right in the photo) with a Japanese one (taken from a butchered beamer).

Cooler didn't get warm anymore.

Heatsinks in my Iwill ZMAXdp to cool the dual Opteron 250's in a Shuttle PC size case -- they are two separate coolers, where one is mounted 90 degrees rotated from the other:

Zalman 9500A LED:

Zalman 9900 LED

Not retro, but the biggest CPU cooler I could fit in my 7700k/GTX1080 10-liter ITX build (Jonsbo U1 Plus case) with just a few millimeters to spare between the SFX PSU and GPU backplate: Noctua NH-C14S -- just a neat implementation I thought

Intel486dx33 wrote:

Your right, That Thermaltake orb is laud but it does keep the CPU functioning. I never took a heat gun to it to see how hot it gets.

You misunderstood, ORB mounting mechanism requires a TWISTING action while it squeezes the delicate Die of the CPU. So no, it doesnt "keep the CPU functioning", it does the complete opposite - it cracks corners of Coppermine/Duron/Athlon CPUs. While Intel cpu Dies seemed to be thicker/stronger, AMD ones died very easily after mounting the ORB.

https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1059642

I just got the new revised Socket A Golden Orb, and it crunched off all four corners of my Duron even before the clip was fully attached

etc. That product was a total disaster.

I had some Xeon beast in the past.
Some 2009 Mac Pros with Dual quad core Xeons ( Dual CPU tray with Huge Heatsinks)
Some HP z400 and z800 with fans and heat sinks and some with liquid cooling.
I think these where some of the first consumer computers available with liquid cooling kits.
Apple and HP use to provide some good cooling solutions for there Pro workstation lines.
I got rid of these old computers are they where too BIG and Loud and used up to much electricity.
They where real beast however, very good performers in Windows XP with dual xeons, 8-cores and 16-threads.
48gb of ram upgradable up to 128gb.

More photos

Sometimes, the CPU is not the hottest part of the system.

My Voodoo-3 heatsink Mods.
“60mm x 60mm x 20mm” fans with “Molex 3v adapter”.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1pcs-60mm-6020s-12V- … 872.m2749.l2649
I just tied them on with thin wire.

I think I will add a fan controller to these.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1-to-3-Computer-Case … DkAAOSwcCJcobNI

I seem to remember the Swiftech MCX-VPro / 603-V / 604-v heatsinks, being more than decent for Xeon cooling - they even came supplied with AS Ceramique TIM.

Don't seem to have much left these days you'd call that unique or custom - so probably this; my Vantec AeroFlow with TMD fan which in reality didn't cool that well, certainly wasn't that quiet (fan always sounded to me like a small jet engine) and was a sod to get on and off the socket.

This one came with a Motherboard purchase.
It's a "Cooler Master Aero" with a fan speed controller.
for Socket Intel 370 or AMD Socket A

Cooler Master Jet-7 cooler
Zalman 3100-plus flower cooler.

That jet7 cooler looks almost like a GP7000 turbofan engine, if there was one that would be considered an unique CPU cooler, it would be this one :p

Yeah, must look nice on a dual socket 370 motherboard.
I think I am going to try to build a mini tower computer.
With a dual 370 motherboard.
And two of these Jet-7 coolers.

I use a Cooler Master Jet 7+ cooler in my overclocked Tualatin system. Compared to the regular Jet 7, it has a fully copper heatsink instead of an aluminium one. Thanks to it, my CPU never reaches 40°C even though the FSB is running at 149MHz.