Introduction

I have the privilege to test another one of OCZ’s products. This time it’s a heat sink fan. I have to say that OCZ has had a long-standing record of producing top quality product so I shouldn’t be disappointed by its performance. The question here is that new XP AMD processors above 1.4Ghz are heating up much faster than the K6 series. Companies such as OCZ develop all sorts of new designs that will result in a better cooling performance. Let’s see how OCZ’s Dominator HSF compares against the other designs in the market.

Specs

The first thing that I noticed about the Dominator was the finger guard and the extra fan that was supplied by OCZ. The fan on the heat sink is a delta design 8000RPMs high performance fan. The aluminium heat sink has really thin fins that help heat to flow through faster, in essence increasing the rate of heat dissipation and the finger guard on really helps in preventing the bending of the fins. The replacement fan is a delta fan at 7000RPMs and a silent replacement if you don’t like the noise generated by the stock fan.

The Dominator has a simple and compact design. The powerful delta fan running at 8000 RPMs and 50 CFM would be adequate to cool most overclocked CPUs. The major drawback is noise. I recommend that you use ear plugs when surfing the Internet cause this fan is noisy!

Installation

Installation is super easy. The clip is large enough that a screwdriver is not needed. The finger guard takes the worry away from having my fat fingers damaging the fins.

Test Procedures

The Test System:

AMD XP 1800+

FIC AZ11EA Motherboard

P4 300W PS

Prime95 v2.1 (Torture Test Mode)

Ambient heat 21°C

STARS-700 Silvergrease (>7.5W/mK thermal conductivity)

Idle temperatures were taken after 15 minutes of 0% CPU usage, and full load temperatures were taken after running Prime95 for 4 hours at 100% CPU usage. CPU temperatures were taken using the motherboard’s internal sensors.

Test Results

As you can tell from the table, the Thermaltake Volcano II didn’t do a good job running at 50-58°C (122-136.4°F), an increase of +8°C (+46.4°F). The Dominator ran at 31-35°C (87.8-95°F), an increase of only +4°C (+39.2°F)

The performance of the Dominator is much better than expected for an aluminium type CPU cooler. It brought down the idle temperature; it manages to keep the full load temperature to a tiny amount even when the CPU was overclocked. As you can see OCZ has outdone themselves again with another superb product.

Conclusion

The OCZ Dominator is comparable to high-end fans such as Global Win and Swiftech. If you are an overclocker looking for some really good cooling for your CPU, then this will be a good choice for you if and only if you don’t mind the bit of noise that it makes! I only wished that I had a Swiftech to compare the performance OCZ Dominator and even then I probably wouldn’t have been disappointed.

Rating

Overall Score: 92%