Some time ago, when I was looking to upgrade my Celeron 300, I came across a monster orb cooler at www.thecoolingstore.com - called The Arctic Circle. It was basically a re-engineered HP PolarLogic Orb. The original HP Orb was designed to dissipate up to 80W of heat, from old hot RISC processors, and The Cooling Store had modified these to fit on P3 or Alpha CPUs.

These HP/Panaflo Orb were the basis for all the new "Orb Spin-offs" that have become popular lately. Most notable are the range from Thermaltake and the newer Agilent Arcticooler CA. While it appears that Themaltake are aiming at the budget market, they generally produce reasonable and cost effective coolers, and some of the reviews I have seen of the Arcticooler CA's performance put it ahead of the Alpha's, which are generally in a league of their own.

Here you can see the relative size of the HP/Panaflo Orb in comparison to some other popular HSF's.

However, while all these clones have nothing on the original, when The Cooling Store were selling their Arctic Circle, I couldn't justify the cost, and bought a Golden Orb instead. The Arctic Circle is not available now - the HP PolarLogic Orbs are no longer manufactured, as stock relied on getting the second hand orbs and refurbishing them - so I thought my chance of owning one of these chunky orbs had slipped away.

Then a month or so ago someone on IRC pointed out that www.allelectronics.com were selling "12 Vdc 90 mm High-Efficiency Fan w/ Integrated Heat Sink" - AKA - Panaflo Orbs - and these orbs turned out to be the HP PolarLogic! They were going for around US$22 or a 'cut out' version for US$17. This time I could not resist and I just had to get one - the only problem was going to be fitting it on my current system, an A7V and Duron 600.

The HP Polarlogic in all its gloy, and removed from the shroud - much easier to fit.
(image borrowed from www.allelectronics.com)

As you can see the whole HP/Panaflo Orb set-up is rather chunky, and there is no way it could be mounted on my board. Since the top of the heatsink has two torx-screws, I figured I'd need to remove these before freeing the Orb from the shroud. However it seems that Manaz was not as patient as me and simply gave it a shove, and the Orb slipped easily out of the enclosure, and was held in by a neat spring retainer.

Note the holes kindly provided by ASUS - for just this kind of setup.

Now that the Orb was free, the job did not look quite so hard. You will also notice that the A7V has holes in the MB for a Kryotech cooling system. While it would be possible to engineer some kind of clip mechanism, I figured it would be easier to some how use the holes provided, to mount the Orb. While this wouldn't be an elegant or easy to remove option - it would be solid and secure - and easier for someone of my limited 'fine engineering' abilities.

The first problem was finding a way to position the ORB, and even with out the shroud it was still quite a tight fit. My original idea of attaching the bolts to the outside of the Orb was quickly discounted, as they simply would not fit. Also the small groove that held the spring in place stopped the ORB from seating properly on the Duron.

Here is the hacked orb, the filed off ledge is on the right and the semi circular groove is ready to epoxy the bolt.

The first step to hacking the Orb was to file off the offending ledge - I used a combination of a hand file and a grinding bit on my 12V drill. With the ledge removed I could then determine how to position the bolts - and again the ledge was in the way. This time however I used a small round grinding bit and simply hacked some semi circle grooves in it - these would provide a place to seat the bolts.

My 12V drill and the grinding bits - useful for hacking Orbs and moding cases.

While hacking the ledge from the Orb I managed to slip a few times and scratch the contact surface. This needed lapping and I should have been more careful when hacking the Orb - luckily only a small part of the surface would actually rest on the core of the Duron.

Since normal bolt 'heads' would not fit in this setup, I purchased some 5/32 inch metal thread from the local hardware shop - 2 foot for about $2.25. Then using some epoxy glue, I stuck the thread in place. This "bitch of a stuff" needed to be mixed and then left for a short period of time before being ready for use. If used too quickly it was not sticky enough, and hence the bolts did not stay in place, and if left too long it dried quickly - setting everything in place - the wrong place! After learning some patience, and gluing one bolt at a time - using copious quantities of epoxy, they were eventually all in place.

Here is the finished product.