For what it's worth,
this is a proper Golden Orb. A passive cooler making *frost,* not *dew* on a desk in Florida? Erm. I seem to recall something about dry ice/liquid N2 snake-oil demos brought up in the 0v4rcl0ck4r circles a while back, but it's been a long time since that (and since the Golden Orb would ever have been adequate)...
Remember, a heatsink that feels cold *under load* isn't doing its job, and/or means your fan is overkill.
I know the Orb design(s), and the base was pretty massive, while the cute fins - especially on the Super Orb - didn't really soak up or transfer the heat that well. However, a block of metal that hefty could easily stay cold for hours after a night in a freezer (or a night with your PC off), allowing for such sales tricks, and providing more than adequate performance for the casual user. (My crappy Antec provided slightly higher numbers, with half the fans and a thousand less RPMs than my Super Orb, and the added advantage/cheat of its blow-on-the-chip-package design. However, the temperature stopped creeping upwards as the box gained uptime. That said, I've no fear for AmigaOnes with the Tt bling, since the wattages involved are nowhere near what we're talking with the older AMDs.)
Heck, if they were selling Peltiers, there's your answer- stack them on the cold sides of the peltiers during show setup, and they're probably chilled through by the time the rubes arrive. How many people are going to stop back multiple times over the day... and of those, how many are going to point fingers, vs. laughing with them?
Anyway, the big huge problem we had with them was end-users trying to treat them like towers by putting them under their desks on their sides.
Problem: The HS was heavy enough to gradually drag the CPU out of the horizontally mounted socket; the system was never intended to be put this way. Convincing the end users otherwise was a royal pain in the ass.
Thanks for the warning, actually -- if I ever get back to adminning the Deskpro-Under-the-Desk, I'll think twice before putting it in a towerizing bracket. That said, the SECC clips on my particular model seemed firm enough that it'd take a good earthquake to accomplish same.
LPX. The riser cards were just something else to break, and break they did...hate 'em.
They're "interesting" to pull in and out, yeah. On my unit, the AGP card would come with; if they'd made the rest of the cardcage removable in similar fashion, it would've actually made things easy. Probably more a boon to their manufacturing, as they could doubtless stick populated risers in before clipping the mainboard to the case... or maybe they couldn't, seeing as it *is* Compaq.
After working with those for a while, you do develop something of a fetish for Torx screws. (Gotta love the way they provide spares!)
Yeah, I always thought that was "polite" of them. The later Deskpro TORX screws were dual-slotted; you could either use a flathead screwdriver or a Torx screw. Did you acquire a "Compaq Tool"? (Multihead screwdriver with a bajillion different sized Torx, flat, and Phillips heads).[/quote]Hm, I've met the dual-slotted, but IIRC they didn't cut/mold the slot all the way through, so you'd still need the Perfect Flathead Screwdriver Never Invented. I had a cheezy 'PC Toolkit' I got one holiday, but it served fine - it's thin-slotted Phillips screws that always cause pain.
Right now I'm using an old Intellistation, which is nice in a different way - IBM used little bolts made of a similar Indestructibilium, with slotted heads, about 6 or 7mm high... and all the 3.5" bays have come with blue rubber damping grommets for the screws, while the 5.25" bays pop out *easily* with a single unbolting, and the goofy molded faceplates pop off to reveal equally-aesthetic standard sized bays. Good luck getting the case panel off, though -- it's screwless, *if* you remember you're supposed to flex-and-shove it over its latch with the little handle provided -- and it'd require some major disassembly to see how they rigged up the built-on RFID hardware! (Disableable in the BIOS.)
