SUMMARY: The friendly folks at OCZ have sent us a few of their heatsinks in the past. Overall, they are quality products that are available for a reasonable price. They haven’t been the top performers, but they have been solidly capable and fall into the upper tier of HSF units. Take a seat while Mike takes you on a discovery of the OCZ Gladiator HSF!
- Antec SX1030 Tower Case - Abit KT7A - Thunderbird 1000 - Arctic Silver Thermal Compound - 256MB PC133 CAS2 SDRAM - Creative Annihilator2 GTS w/ 32MB - Sound Blaster Live - Western Digital 20.5GB @ 7200 rpm
I used my normal testing procedures with this heatsink. This consists of taking the temperature at idle, then running a consecutive looping of the 3dMark2001 Demo, and then running the system through an intense Deathmatch in Quake III Arena. I have found that these two tests can really stress out a system, and they are very good at producing a lot of heat. They are also quite processor intensive, which is what I wanted to see whats hot and whats not. Ambient room temperature was 21.5C for all tests.
Tests are conducted at the processors standard speed of 1000MHz and then again at 1100MHz so that we can see how it does with the added pressure of an overclocked system. The charts below show how the Gladiator performed against some of its biggest competitors.
That takes care of the testing at 1000MHz. its easy to see that the Gladiator is easily the King of the Hill. Its copper base along with the massive Delta fan on top is an unbeatable combination.
America's #1 video game magazine, brings you world-exclusive cover stories on the hottest upcoming games, unbiased 3 person game reviews & heavy-hitting interviews with gaming's most influential creators.