I recently reviewed the OCZ Gladiator II that OCZ sent over. This review is on the second heatsink they sent along which is the OCZ Dominator 2. This heatsink is a low profile aluminum heatsink which is the successor to the original Dominator heatsink which I also reviewed a while back. This Dominator 2 is similar to the original one with a few differences which we will look at during the review. Because this heatsink is made of aluminum and doesn’t have a super high powered fan on it I dont expect it to be the best performing heatsink I have ever tested but that doesn’t meant that it’s a bad heatsink.
The Dominator 2-CU comes in the same style box that the OCZ Gladiator II comes in which is pretty plain. The heatsink is also packed in the same fashion and wasn’t damaged in any way. There isnt much more to say about the packaging because its a small item but overall it is sufficient.
From the side of the heatsink you can see that there are lots of thin fins which use textured fin technology. The basic idea behind the new technology is that because the fins have a rougher texture to them they will dissipate heat better than if it was just smooth.
I can’t really say that there is any noticeable difference to this new technology and there is really no way to test it unless I had the same heatsink without the textured fins. I took off the fan and you can see down below it are all the fins which should hopefully cool the CPU well.
The heatsink comes in the box and is in a plastic container which protects the base from getting damaged along with the rest of the unit. The heatsink comes with a thermal pad on it which isnt the best thing so I went ahead and removed it with some rubbing alcohol. After removing the thermal pad I was impressed with the finish of the base, there aren’t any noticeable marks on it.
The heatsink comes with a ball bearing 60×10 Whisper Quiet fan with the following specs: 5300RPM, 40 dBa, 25CFM, and has a 3-pin connector. This heatsink comes with generic thermal pad on the bottom of the heatsink which is not as good as some high quality thermal grease. The clip on this heatsink requires a screwdriver to be used which is bad in my opinion because you can damage your motherboard if it slips.
I went ahead and installed this heatsink to my normal testbed which went pretty well. This clip requires a screwdrive to be used which is always a bad thing because they can slip off and damage your hardware. The clip is alright and because the heatsink is small there is a good amount of room for the screwdriver to fit in the clip and not hit components on the motherboard. Removal of the heatsink was a little tough and the screwdriver ended up slipping off the clip a few times but nothing was damaged.
I will be using an EPoX 8K9A2+ with my Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) and will be using Motherboard Monitor to get the temperature readings of the CPU. This was done by setting motherboard monitor to “Winbond Diode 2” which will read the on-die thermal diode of the XP. I will be using Arctic Silver 3 as the thermal compound because it is the best on the market. Idle temperatures were taken while idling in the BIOS and the load temperatures were achieved by using Prime95 which put the CPU up to 100% load.
Test Bed:
- EPoX 8K9A2+
- 1800+ Athlon XP
- 60GB Seagate Barracuda IV HDD
- Corsair 512MB PC3200
- Abit Geforce 4 Ti4200 OTES 8x AGP 128MB
- PcToys VGA MAXX Heatpipe Cooler
- PcToys NB MAXX
- Koolcase’s Panther
- Generic 300w PSU
- Sound Blaster Live! Value
- ATi TV Wonder VE
- Plextor 40x12x40 CDRW
- Plextor PX-504A DVD+RW (review to come)
- pioneer 16x DVD
After installing the heatsink I booted up my computer and went into the BIOS right away to get the idle temperature. After idling in the BIOS for about 20 minutes I got a idle temperature of 35 degrees Celsius. I then booted into Windows and ran Prime95 for about 15 minutes. After getting the CPU to load it came to be 45 degrees Celsius which isn’t a bad temperature. The heatsink did a really good job cooling my CPU while only being semi-loud.
Conclusion
This heatsink was able to dish out what I basically expected it to, it isnt the best heatsink on the market but its not bad by any means. The fact that it is low profile, aluminum, and comes with a thermal pad simply means it isnt for your highly overclocked machine.
This heatsink would be best suited for a server, home/office PC, or budget system. I like the fact that it has a copper insert because without it the temperatures would have been much higher. The cons to this heatsink are simply the fact that its made of aluminum, is a little loud for my taste, and came with a thermal pad.
This heatsink is pretty good and overall I am pretty pleased with it. I am going to give this heatsink a 7/10 after taking all pros and cons into account. I would like to thank OCZ for sending me this heatsink. I am going to be giving away 5 of these heatsinks and 5 of the Gladiator II heatsinks away soon so watch for that!
Pros
- Performs well
- Good clip
- Copper insert
- Low profile
Cons
- Aluminum
- A little loud
- Thermal pad