OCZ Gladiator Review
OCZ HSF Review
OCZ Gladiator Review
Introduction
Over the past several months, many new heatsink designs have come to the market
promising great gains in cooling efficiency. Some of the better performers have
been all copper constructed heatsinks that provide great heat disappatation
through the solid copper base and thin copper cooling fins. The OCZ Gladiator
has taken all of this and placed a 6800 RPM fan on top to make what appears
to be a great cooling solution for your overclocked Athlon.
The cooler details
Today I will be reviewing the OCZ Gladiator HSF combination provided to us by
OCZ. This cooler touts an all copper
design with a fast (and loud) 6800 RPM fan aimed at providing the ultimate cooling
for your cpu. It has been constructed using a special technology that enables
the heatsink to cover more surface area to provide the best cooling situation
possible. Does it perform as well as it sounds and looks? Read on and find out.
Installation
At first glance, the installation of this heatsink looks impossible. Not because
of its size, but because the mounting clip barely clears the base of the heatsink.
But after putting my fears to rest, I straped it to my processor. Aside from the
stubborn mounting clip, installation was not too bad. I used quicksilver
thermal compound (also provided by OCZ)
between the cpu and HSF to ensure good heat transfer from the CPU to the base
of the heatsink. One word of caution, because of high the tension of the clip,
there is a lot of pressure placed onto the core. So, take care when mounting the
heatsink to your CPU to ensure no damage is done. As for size, the dimensions
of 1-1/8" x 2-3/8" x 2-1/2" proved to be no problem when mounting it on my KT7A-RAID
board which, in the past, has seen problems with those pesky capacitors that are
right next to the CPU socket.
System setup
For the testing of this heatsink, I mounted it onto an ABIT KT7A-RAID board running
a 1Ghz AMD processor at 1100Mhz. Temperatures were taken with a OMEGA digital
temperature probe mounted right next to the cpu core. QuickSilver compound was
used throughout testing and each heatsink base was cleaned with rubbing alcohol
before application of the compound.
Performance
One of the hardest things I have ever tried to do is convenience someone that
their stock heatsink and fan is not adequate for properly cooling their CPU. They
figure that if an OEM sells it with this HSF, then it must be fine. Well, below
I included some temperature readings of a stock OEM heatsink to illustrate how
poorly they actually perform and what kind of gains can be had by spending a few
more dollars. As for the OCZ Gladiator, I was quite impressed with how it performed.
It even out-chilled the much famous WBK-38
As you can see from the graph, the OCZ Gladiator knocked the socks off of the
stock heatsink by ten degrees which is no real surprise. What was a surprise
is that it out performed the WBK-38, shaving four degrees off the temperature.
When looking for a heatsink to place on your overclocked cpu, this is a big
deal.
Conclusion: The OCZ Gladiator is a great performing heatsink. If you
are a serious overclocker and only the best will do, then this cooler is for
you. The only drawbacks of this cooler are that the fan is VERY loud, and the
amount of pressure the mounting clip places on the CPU core. But at $29.00,
you can't beat it.
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