OCZ Vanquisher Review

Testing:

Testing will be performed by running Orthos to load the CPU to 100%. Temperatures will be recorded at idle and 100% load at stock (6000+ @ 3.0 GHz) and overclocked (6000+ @ 3267 MHz) settings. The Vanquisher will be pitted against the stock AMD cooler, as well as its bigger brother, the Vendetta. Idle temps are recorded after 20 minutes idle on the desktop. Load temps are recorded after 30 minutes of 100% load from Orthos.

Testing Setup:

• AMD Athlon64 Processor 6000+
• ECS A770M-A (BIOS dated 12/04/07, Chipset drivers provided on CD)
• Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB PC2-9200 DDR2-1150MHz
• OCZ Vendetta CPU Cooler
• PowerColor HD2600 PRO (Catalyst 7.11)
• Antec NeoPower 650W
• 1x250GB Maxtor SATA
• 2x400GB Seagate SATA
• Apevia X-Jupiter Jr case
• Plextor PX-716SA 16X DVD RW SATA
• HL 4164B 16X DVD RW IDE
• Windows XP Professional SP2

Overclocked settings:

• CPU Speed: 15x218 = 3267 MHz
• CPU Voltage: 1.43
• RAM Speed: 436 MHz
• RAM Voltage: 1.9v
• RAM Timings: 5-5-5-16-1T

Stock:

Overclocked:

While not a world record beater, the OCZ Vanquisher does exactly what it is supposed to do. Provide an alternative cooling solution that offers better performance than the stock heatsink. At the overclocked settings, the Vanquisher fell short of the Vendetta by only two degrees Celsius while beating the stock solution by seven. Decent performance for the dollars spent.