Even though OCZ may not have the best customer services the fact that they make good products still remains. OCZ makes high quality products for overclocking and cooling purposes and I still use an OCZ Gladiator on my server. Now Let’s take a look at the OCZ Dominator² Heatsink
Here is a front shot of the Dominator as you can see the fan is taller than the base of the heatsink. Here’s a side shot of the heatsink, you can see the clip and the fins, which we will look at in more detail in a minute. I took the fan off to reveal the shroud and the fins, there are 46 Micro fins, which help dissipate heat. I then removed the shroud, which is attached by 4 small screws; the shroud helps direct the air directly onto the heatsink without losing pressure.
Underneath the shroud the heatsink has a portion of the fins on both sides removed so the shroud can fit properly, the picture is not that great, however you can see on the right side how the fins are textured, the textured fins is a technology that is supposed to increase the heat dissipation.
The clip looks to be of good design, you do not need a screwdriver. We will see later if it works well or not.
The base of the Dominator² is pretty well finished however there are noticeable swirl marks on the bottom; OCZ could have done a better job finishing it. You can always lap the heatsink which will most likely improve the overall performance.
The fan has a 4 pin connector for the power and also has a 3 pin connection which you can attach to one of your motherboard headers to monitor RPMs, this is a really nice feature which I think more high powered fans that cannot be hooked to a motherboard header should use. Here are the specs of the fan.
- Dimensions: 60x60x25
- Air Flow: 40CFM
- Speed: 6800RPM
- Noise: 48.2 dB
The Dominator installed quite easily, I found the clip to be very good especially sense I did not have to use a screwdriver to do it. Here’s how it looks installed, as you can see there is plenty of room around it. When I powered up the computer the 48dB were definitely there, the fan is quite loud. Lets see if the loudness of the fan proves to yeild good results.
As always I will be using Artic Silver 3 for testing, and will be using an external Compunurse thermal probe for the temperature readings. After booting up the computer I let the CPU idle for about 30 minutes and took the readings from the Compunurse. After taking those results I used Prime95 to torture test the CPU and bring it to load. Here are the results.
The OCZ Dominator² performed really well keeping the CPU at a low temperature under load, under 40 degrees Celsius is really good. The increase of temperature from idle to load was only 3.5 degrees which is also really good.
Conclusion
Overall the OCZ Dominator² is a really good heatsink, it has a good and easy to use clip and comes with a high-powered fan to keep those hot AMD CPUs at a good temperature. I really like the ability to monitor RPMs with this heatsink; most high-powered fans need a 3-4 pin adapter, which means you cannot monitor RPMs.
Although the base is not finished to the highest quality I don’t think that lapping it to a perfectly smooth surface would necessarily make that big of a difference it would just be nice to have it finished correctly. Overall I really like this heatsink and if your looking for a powerful heatsink to keep your overclocked CPU cool this will definitely do the job. I would like to thank Paul from PC PitStop for sending this over to review, head on over and pick one up.
Pros
- Excellent performance
- Good price ($16.99)
- Able to monitor RPMs
- Good clip design
- Low profile design
- Fan grill included
Cons
- Loud fan
- Base poorly finished