OCZ Vindicator: Heatpipe Tower Cooling from OCZ
by Wesley Fink on April 5, 2007 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Final Words
The OCZ Vindicator is a full heatpipe tower that is designed to be used with one or more 120mm cooling fans. OCZ also claims that the Vindicator can be used to cool at stock speeds with no fan at all. That is probably true, but our current case setup is really not optimized with cooling paths for fanless cooling. With the barely average results achieved with the stock Vindicator fan it seemed unfair to test and report less than stellar fanless results with a cooling setup not really geared to fanless cooling. We will be making changes to our cooler test bed in the near future, with the goal of realistically reducing noise and improving case airflow using means available to our readers.
The Vindicator is produced in the same plant as the Scythe Ninja Plus Revision B, so it is understandable that the OCZ cooler bears a striking resemblance to the Ninja Plus B. OCZ ships the Vindicator preassembled for Socket T (Socket 775), so it is ready to install on today's most common enthusiast CPU - Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad. OCZ also includes an easy to mount adapter for AMD Socket AM2/939/940/754. The Vindicator therefore fits all current production processors and most recent CPUs except for Intel Socket 478.
The stock Vindicator fan is clearly designed for low noise first. With a meager 40 CFM output and 18.5 dB-A noise rating it is a great cooler for a low-noise PC just as it comes from the kit. If your goal in purchasing a new cooler is silence you will be happy with the full OCZ stock package. The Vindicator name does suggest more though, and overclocking is one arena where OCZ is always a player.
The problem with overclocking, however, is the anemic output of the stock Vindicator fan. If you push overclocking with the Vindicator as far as it will go you end up with a stable overclock on our test bed of 3.80GHz. This is average to below average among the heatpipe tower coolers we have reviewed. Fortunately this problem can be corrected and the Vindicator is capable of much more. Replace the stock fan with the quiet (14 dB-A) and powerful (72 CFM) SilenX IXTREMA 120 and the Vindicator can overclock with the best.
The OCZ Vindicator with the SilenX reached a stable 3.90GHz, which matches the top tier of cooler performance we have tested. This matches the excellent Tuniq Tower 120, Thermalright Ultra 120, Cooler Master Hyper 6+ and the Scythe Infinity with two fans in a push-pull configuration. You can achieve similar but slightly lower results by using two OCZ fans, or similar quiet medium output fans in a dual push-pull arrangement. However two SilenX in push-pull did not really allow a higher overclock, so there is a limit to how much increased airflow will benefit the performance of an air cooler.
For OCZ, the Vindicator is said to be the first in a much expanded line of CPU coolers. We look forward to testing the upcoming OCZ coolers, but we hope the new coolers will be a little more original that the Vindicator. Performance does differ from the similar Scythe Ninja Plus Rev. B primarily because a different fan is used, but the cooler itself is a Ninja Plus Rev. B with a different cut-out design on the aluminum fins.
If you want a quiet PC and modest overclocking you will be very happy with the stock OCZ kit. It is quiet and cools reasonably well. If you are an enthusiast who overclocks, buy another fan and clips and do push-pull for improved performance. For top overclocking performance throw away the stock OCZ fan and substitute something like the super quiet/high output SilenX or the Scythe SFLEX SFF21F. With a better matched fan you can reach the performance levels of the best air coolers available.
However, no matter what you do the OCZ is not quite as effective at lowering temperatures as the Tuniq Tower 120 or the Thermalright Ultra 120/Ultra 120 Extreme. The Vindicator with a better-matched fan will not hold back your overclocking attempts, but cooling is not in the same league as the top Tuniq and Thermalright coolers we have evaluated at AnandTech.
The OCZ Vindicator is a great beginning to an expanded OCZ cooler line. We liked OCZ coolers when they were more plentiful a few years ago. OCZ has that cooler background to be tapped in expanding their cooler product line. We look forward to seeing many new designs as OCZ establishes and expands their selection of cooling products.
The OCZ Vindicator is a full heatpipe tower that is designed to be used with one or more 120mm cooling fans. OCZ also claims that the Vindicator can be used to cool at stock speeds with no fan at all. That is probably true, but our current case setup is really not optimized with cooling paths for fanless cooling. With the barely average results achieved with the stock Vindicator fan it seemed unfair to test and report less than stellar fanless results with a cooling setup not really geared to fanless cooling. We will be making changes to our cooler test bed in the near future, with the goal of realistically reducing noise and improving case airflow using means available to our readers.
The Vindicator is produced in the same plant as the Scythe Ninja Plus Revision B, so it is understandable that the OCZ cooler bears a striking resemblance to the Ninja Plus B. OCZ ships the Vindicator preassembled for Socket T (Socket 775), so it is ready to install on today's most common enthusiast CPU - Core 2 Duo or Core 2 Quad. OCZ also includes an easy to mount adapter for AMD Socket AM2/939/940/754. The Vindicator therefore fits all current production processors and most recent CPUs except for Intel Socket 478.
The stock Vindicator fan is clearly designed for low noise first. With a meager 40 CFM output and 18.5 dB-A noise rating it is a great cooler for a low-noise PC just as it comes from the kit. If your goal in purchasing a new cooler is silence you will be happy with the full OCZ stock package. The Vindicator name does suggest more though, and overclocking is one arena where OCZ is always a player.
The problem with overclocking, however, is the anemic output of the stock Vindicator fan. If you push overclocking with the Vindicator as far as it will go you end up with a stable overclock on our test bed of 3.80GHz. This is average to below average among the heatpipe tower coolers we have reviewed. Fortunately this problem can be corrected and the Vindicator is capable of much more. Replace the stock fan with the quiet (14 dB-A) and powerful (72 CFM) SilenX IXTREMA 120 and the Vindicator can overclock with the best.
The OCZ Vindicator with the SilenX reached a stable 3.90GHz, which matches the top tier of cooler performance we have tested. This matches the excellent Tuniq Tower 120, Thermalright Ultra 120, Cooler Master Hyper 6+ and the Scythe Infinity with two fans in a push-pull configuration. You can achieve similar but slightly lower results by using two OCZ fans, or similar quiet medium output fans in a dual push-pull arrangement. However two SilenX in push-pull did not really allow a higher overclock, so there is a limit to how much increased airflow will benefit the performance of an air cooler.
For OCZ, the Vindicator is said to be the first in a much expanded line of CPU coolers. We look forward to testing the upcoming OCZ coolers, but we hope the new coolers will be a little more original that the Vindicator. Performance does differ from the similar Scythe Ninja Plus Rev. B primarily because a different fan is used, but the cooler itself is a Ninja Plus Rev. B with a different cut-out design on the aluminum fins.
If you want a quiet PC and modest overclocking you will be very happy with the stock OCZ kit. It is quiet and cools reasonably well. If you are an enthusiast who overclocks, buy another fan and clips and do push-pull for improved performance. For top overclocking performance throw away the stock OCZ fan and substitute something like the super quiet/high output SilenX or the Scythe SFLEX SFF21F. With a better matched fan you can reach the performance levels of the best air coolers available.
However, no matter what you do the OCZ is not quite as effective at lowering temperatures as the Tuniq Tower 120 or the Thermalright Ultra 120/Ultra 120 Extreme. The Vindicator with a better-matched fan will not hold back your overclocking attempts, but cooling is not in the same league as the top Tuniq and Thermalright coolers we have evaluated at AnandTech.
The OCZ Vindicator is a great beginning to an expanded OCZ cooler line. We liked OCZ coolers when they were more plentiful a few years ago. OCZ has that cooler background to be tapped in expanding their cooler product line. We look forward to seeing many new designs as OCZ establishes and expands their selection of cooling products.
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Wesley Fink - Thursday, April 5, 2007 - link
You make a good point, but I remain concerned about introducing additional noise and cooling variables into the test platform with a variable fan speed PS. In flat out gaming every PS I have seen is running at load conditions. However, your suggestions are certainly "real world" and we will definitley evaluate the impact of one of the "silent idle" power supplies on our total cooler testing. Our goal is to find ways to lower the ambient noise and sytem noise floor in realistic ways to provide a wider db test rangeyacoub - Thursday, April 5, 2007 - link
Yeah exactly. My PC DOESN'T sit at Load settings for its fans. See I actually have them all dynamically controlled by temp and they only spin up when the machine is actually processing heavily enough to warm things up to a level that needs the fans to spin up a bit more to cool effectively.I'm starting to think it's more a matter that most folks don't care enough to quiet their PCs down so they don't realize how much nicer it is to have a quiet PC. This would be why they think it's normal to have a PSU making 40db of noise and thus fans can be 36db of noise and they think that's ok.
My PC (and it's not exactly designed to be totally silent) is inaudible except when I'm gaming or doing heavy work in a program in windows that requires the cpu to load up a lot. I can surf the Internet, type a Word doc, listen to music, or watch a DVD, and it's inaudible unless you put your ear within a foot or two of the case.
(P150 Antec case, Antec True-Power2.0 450w PSU (recently replaced by a Corsair 520w that has a fan that is a tiny bit more audible), SpeedFan, ATiTool, and good configurations are to thank for that. It's even using the retail cooler on my A64 Venice 3200+ and it's overclocked to 2.4GHz and it's still silent because I have the fan on it throttle down to 40% when it's under 40C, which it is most of the time.)
punko - Thursday, April 5, 2007 - link
For me, my wife watches television in the same room that I have the computer. When I'm gaming I use either very low sound or headphones.Noise is an issue, whether at idle, low load, or heavy load.
If anything, I tend to have the CPU and GPU maxed out when I'm on the computer, so the "real world" testing of a complete system underload is the most important sound rating. Idle? don't care, that means I'm not in the room.
What I would love to see is a general guide for those of us planning to build a new rig, and get an idea of what is available in terms of major components for building a quiet (not silent) PC. I am more than well aware that there are specialist sites that do component by component reviews, but I am more interested in the "real world" knowledge of people that assemble and use hundreds of components in various configurations.
Articles like this one help, because the focus the attention on a particular component as part of an overall system.
yacoub - Thursday, April 5, 2007 - link
oh and by "only spin up" i mean "spin up from the level I have them throttled down to" not "spin up from stopped". You never want to throttle fans down to where they stop while the system is on, because there's always the danger they won't spin back up.asdfqwertyuiop - Thursday, April 5, 2007 - link
This article is poor. The SilenX claims are just false, and parroting their marketing BS without adequate testing is unsatisifactory. There are about a dozen fans, including the stock Intel one, all on the same db rating. So in other words, testing was insufficient to establish whether or not the fans are quieter than even the bog-standard Intel one.Accepting SilenX's BS that their fan achieves dramatically more airflow with less noise than anything else available shows excessive credulity.
Aside, what's with tech firms and the product names that sound like they are aimed at 13-year olds? Vindicator??? This is a heatsink, not an assault weapon.
tomoyo - Thursday, April 5, 2007 - link
As stated by quotes from a silentpcreview reader here - http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php...">http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php...There's so many inaccurate and incorrect commentary in this review that it's utterly amazing it was ever posted. It's obvious the heatsink was designed by scythe and relabeled by OCZ, that's nothing terrible to say since tons of brand names are made by different companies. I'm MOST disgusted by the blatant love of Silenx fans when their specifications on their fans are 100% WRONG. It is physically impossible for their fans to be as quiet as they say, which means they're purely and utterly liars. A company that lies should not be praised like anandtech is doing. I'm surprised they are not using a quiet nmb-panaflo, nexus, or other good fan out there.
And the OCZ powerstream is certainly not one of the quieter power supplies out there. A better comparison psu would be something like a Seasonic or Corsair.
There's plenty of other issues with the writing quality here, but I think these are the most blatant.
amdlive - Thursday, April 5, 2007 - link
What is the true specifications of the fan utilized in this article? If no the specs listed are 100% wrong, then provide the real world results you have. We are waiting and by the way, post a link to your last review.
amdlive - Thursday, April 5, 2007 - link
What is the true specifications of the fan utilized in this article? If you know the specs listed are 100% wrong, then provide the real world results you have. We are waiting and by the way, post a link to your last review.
goinginstyle - Thursday, April 5, 2007 - link
Silent PC Reviews are a total joke. They in no way simulate conditions inside, near, or even remotely in plain sight of a PC. Most of the members over there are elitist wannabes who drink the Chin Kool-Aid and then march off like ants to spread the gospel of lies that are the SPCR test results. Most of their articles are contradictory once you really read them and the computer equipment they use is several generations old. They are not even using equipment that most of us have bought in the last two years and to even consider a P4 and 6800GT as components that stress a power supply is just laughable. The site is one big cluster "F" with most of the recommendations going to their sponsor list. I could not believe some of the asinine comments posted in that topic. Hopefully they wake up and smell the $h!t that is spewing from the writers over there.My issues with the cooling reviews here are the noise levels in the room. They really need to be around 26 to 30dBA to properly test most components in your "real world" test routines. There are a lot of people who probably have rooms at home in that noise range along with components whose base noise levels fall in the same category. I would also like to see how well the units fit on the top three or four selling motherboards along with some power supply reviews.
Wesley Fink - Thursday, April 5, 2007 - link
According to a Noise article at SPCR 26 to 30db is the noise level of a "quiet bedroom at night". 35 to 45 db - our ambient noise is 36db - is the noise level of a "Quiet office or library; Typical PC Subdued". The complete chart is in comments below. We hope to lower noise a bit in a reworked test bed but we are not confident we can get below 30db consisitently.