| OCZ Technology Vendetta CPU Cooler
|
Conclusion:
The thermal results speak for themselves and show that the OCZ Technology Vendetta CPU Cooler is worth upgrading to. Under a load it shaved 8-9 degrees off the stock Intel cooler, and managed to best the nearly identical Kingwin Revolution by about 7 degrees. My initial experience with direct touch heatpipes left me a bit underwhelmed, but the Vendetta shows that a cooler with this design can provide a respectable drop in processor temperatures.
One thing not mentioned to this point was the noise level. While running at full speed, the fan was louder than I would be able to tolerate for too long. It sounded just like the fan on the Kingwin cooler, which was one of my main beefs with that cooler. But, the cooling performance of the Vendetta left open the option of slowing the fan down for near silent operation while maintaining reasonable temperatures. With the fan turned down to under 1900RPM I could no longer hear it over the other fans in the system, and the full load temperatures were only 42 and 45 degrees Celsius on the two processor cores.
A search of PriceGrabber reveals another pleasant surprise on the OCZ Technology Vendetta CPU Cooler... A retail price under $30. I really have a hard time justifying the purchase of some of the $50+ coolers on the market, and $30-$50 seems to be my target price range. If you can offer something with excellent performance for even less than this amount, it would be hard not to recommend it.
Given the price, performance, and ability to remain cool in near silence, the OCZ Technology Vendetta CPU Cooler earns the Bigbruin.com awards of "Recommended" and "Good Value".
 
Pros:
» Excellent cooling performance at full speed
» Cools well even with fan slowed down to near silence
» Tool-less rubber vibration isolation mounts on fan
» Sells for less than $30 (US)
Cons:
» Loud with fan at full speed
» Tricky to install with motherboard already in computer case
Special thanks to OCZ Technology for providing the OCZ Technology Vendetta CPU Cooler to Bigbruin.com for review!
Please drop by the Bigbruin.com Forum and feel free to post any comments or questions.
|
|
|
|
