Until recently, I did not know that OCz Technology Inc. - best known for its memory - also markets HSFs and semiconductors for computers. Today I will be reviewing the OCz Gladiator II, a copper heat sink with a higher fin count than its predicessor (the Gladiator I) and OCz's "textured fin technology."

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The Gladiator II came with OCz's "Ultra" - a thermal paste that comes in a syringe similar to that of Arctic Silver, and has a thermal conductivity of 8.6 W/mK. Three grams of paste is in every syringe.

The Specifications

Construction: Single Piece Construction
Dimensions: 62 x 70 x 44 mm
Material: Pure Copper
Support: All socket 370 CPUs, up to 3100+
Stock Fan: 60x25, 7000 rpm, 39.5 cfm.

The base comes polished and does not have any machining discrepancies whatsoever. The clip is one I'm growing fond of - it uses all 6 notches on the CPU socket to hold the cooler in place, which is useful as this cooler isn't a lightweight.

The fan pushes 39.5 cfm which should be more than enough for any user, and includes a fan grill, which is handy when you slip while the case is on and don't want your fingers to get eaten up by a fan blade running at 7000 rpm.

Testing

The HSF was tested on the following system:
CPU: Athlon 1700+
Motherboard: Abit KR7A-Raid
Ram: Corsair PC2100 (512 Megs)
Sound Card: Disabled

The Gladiator II will be pitted against:
AMD Stock
Zalman CNPS5100-Cu
Vantec CCK-6027D

I ran SUPER_PI, an extremely CPU intensive application to calculate pi up to 32 million digits for 30 minutes. Room temperature remained constant throughout the tests, the case remained open for testing. The motherboard's thermistor recorded a constant value throughout the testing.

I found that the Gladiator II was right on par with the CCK-6027D, which surprised me. I honestly did not expect OCz's HSF to perform as well as a Vantec's unit simply due to Vantec's long time in the HSF market. It should also be noted that the Vantec had a delta on it, which was higher pitched than OCZ's stock fan, which wasn't soft itself. The Gladiator II also had many more fins than the CCK-6027D.

There was no negligible difference in my tests with Arctic Silver 3 and OCz Ultra. Each score was equal.

Final Words

I guess it's going to come down to what you need your heatsink for. To be honest, it doesn't take a lot of effort to cool down a 1700+, and things get harder when it gets to 2GHz and up. We've seen here at VL the overclocking abilities CPUs can reach when you slap a monster cooler on it, so a relatively small cooler like the Gladiator II may not be up to the task.

It does have some things going for it. It comes with everything you need to get going, as the large coolers usually require a fan purchased separately. The fan isn't as annoying as most 60mm fans, especially the Delta. There are a total of 40 fins, compacted into a very tight package. This will result in relatively good compatibility with most AMD motherboards.

Pros: All-Copper unit, good clip, fan not as whiny as a delta.

Cons: No match for the big boys such as Swiftech and Thermalright.

The Bottom Line: Although this isn't the best of the best HSF's out there, OCz has thoroughly impressed me with this HSF, and is most definitely a contender.

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