Verdict: CPU cooling for those who wear earmuffs.
OCZ's latest CPU cooler, the cinematically named Vendetta, is 'built to tackle heat-induced performance degradation'. For those who don't speak marketing guff, this means that it prevents your CPU from becoming too hot. Given that this is the intended purpose of the product, this is reassuring to know.
The Vendetta is almost a carbon copy of Arctic Cooling's all-conquering Freezer 7 Pro, right down to the use of standard Intel plastic push-pins (so there's no messing around removing your motherboard from the case). Three U-shaped heatpipes transfer heat away from the base of the cooler and spread it over thin sheets of aluminium. A 92mm PWM controlled fan on one side blows air through the fins and, if you orientate the cooler correctly, dissipates heat towards your case's rear exhaust fan. Job done.
There's one difference between the Vendetta and Freezer 7 Pro, though, inasmuch as the Freezer 7 Pro has a copper base plate, through which the heat has to travel before reaching the cooler's array of heatpipes. However, when the Vendetta is securely installed, its three heatpipes make direct contact with the CPU, in effect cutting out the middleman.
The Vendetta managed to keep our overclocked Xeon X3210 test CPU 10ûC cooler than it was with the reference Intel HSF. This is a very good result, and it's 2ûC cooler than when using the Freezer 7 Pro. However, the Vendetta proved far noisier than the Freezer 7 Pro at full speed, being far too noisy for comfort. However the Vendetta is acceptably quiet when the CPU isn't running at full load and the fan slows down.
Conclusion
The Vendetta is a slightly more effective CPU cooler than the Freezer 7 Pro at top speed, but is much noisier. Because of this extra noise, and the higher cost of the Vendetta, the Freezer 7 Pro is still our favourite cheap LGA775 HSF, while the massive Tuniq Tower 120 remains our favourite high-performance LGA775 HSF.
