OCZ Vendetta 2 OCZTVEND2 120mm Rifle CPU Cooler

Pros: High rated cooler.

Cons: Needs support bracket.

Other Thoughts: You pretty much need the support bracket to mount this appropriately, and for some reason they did not supply it, unlike every other cooler on earth. It's about $16 and oddly I dont think Newegg carries it.

Manufacturer Response:

Hello, some systems and motherboards may not require the additional support bracket. We started selling them when it became apparent that it may be required in some cases.
Thank you

Pros: Easy installation, AMAZING price, impressive temps, I can't hear it

Cons: -Huge. This isn't really a con, but If you have a mid tower make sure it will fit before you buy it.

-The adhesive on the tape protecting the base of the HS during shipping stuck on when I tore the tape off, leaving behind all sorts of residue. 3 Minutes of Goo Gone etc it was off and ready to mount, but some people might not have noticed.

-They should have shipped it with better thermal paste.

Other Thoughts: My Phenom II x4 955 with stock HSF would reach 65C on Prime 95 after about 5 minutes @ 3.2 GHz. With this Vendetta 2 and some Arctic Silver 5, I have it sitting at 3.8 GHz and even after an hour of Prime 95 torture testing it doesnt break 53C. Its nice to not worry about cooling whatsoever, thanks OCZ.

Pros: Reasonable cost, quiet fan, works as advertised. Lowered temp about 6 degrees C from the AMD 9850BE cooler and the PC is in a warm room. Installs easy enough.

Cons: Apparently nobody from OCZ's QA dept has tried to install a retail packaged version. The protective plastic covering on the polished face left a glue residue that took a good 5 minutes to scrub off using Goo Gone. Not a big deal but annoying.

Other Thoughts: Fit's, barely in an older mid-tower case. Had to choose between blowing the warm CPU air up into the PSU or pulling warm PSU air down through the heatsink and onto the video card. I chose down but reversed the porthole fan to blow some room air into the case, onto this unit.

Pros: Cools very well and does so relatively quietly. Also cools the new i7's well if you get a LGA1366 bolt through kit.

Cons: Pushpins are ok for stock coolers but not for tower coolers. These coolers are big and heavy and one or two of the plastic pushpins sometimes pop out which leads to uneven pressure and higher temps.

Other Thoughts: If your going to get get this cooler get a bolt through kit. OCZ sells them for this cooler or you can use Xigmateks Crossbow kit. Their are other coolers that cool just as well that come with a bolt through kit for less or the same price.

Pros: Installed on an AM2+ board, keeps my 720 BE cool at 28 degrees idle, 36 degrees under full load. Very quiet at 1000rpm, can't hear it at all from within the case.

Cons: Mounting was a bit tricky, but nothing extraordinarily difficult; probably due to the fact that the cooler is so large, there isn't a whole lot of room to maneuver around inside the case.

A bit on the pricey side, but I snagged mine with a MIR, so that helped bring the price down a bit.

On an AM2+ board, the HS will only mount vertically (because of the AMD retainer orientation). This is annoying, since it tends to disrupt the case airflow a bit. However, my case (Antec Three Hundred) has an exhaust fan on the top, so it's not a huge deal. May be a deal breaker if you have a case with only an exhaust fan on the back of the case.

Other Thoughts: A number of people have commented that this cooler will block the first 2 RAM slots. I have it installed in a Gigabyte MA790GP-UD4H, and had no such problems (I have two sticks of OCZ Platinum 8500 DDR2 RAM).

When I first installed it, the fan would not run (even with it running passively, it still kept the CPU temps lower than the stock HS by about 5 degrees!). After checking around, I discovered that I had to manually enable PWM support in the BIOS for the CPU fan. Worked perfectly after that.

Overall, an excellent HS, I would very highly recommend it.

Pros: Keeps my AMD 720 BE pretty cool (37 under load @3.1 GHz for all 3 cores). It has large copper heat pipes, and a quiet fan.

Cons: Little rubber fan mounts were kind of a pain. Didn't come with the OCZ Freeze thermal paste. It had some cheap silicon based stuff. I already have AS-5 though, so no biggie.

Other Thoughts: Installed on a GIGABYTE GA-MA790FXT-UD5P, but with the following issues:

1. Had to turn the orientation with the fan side down blowing up due to how the MB mount was. This is ok since my case has fans on the top blowing out.

2. Had to move my OCZ Reaper DDR3 over to the 3rd and 4th slots because they were too tall.

3. I will be looking for a better fan. The one that is included is too quiet, and I would prefer one that has a bit more RPM headroom.

Pros: I'm so happy with this cooler I can barely think. So I will just give the numbers.
Core2Duo E8400 @ 3.0ghz (Stock Speed).
Stock cooler @idle, 33c. Under linpack test, 51c.
OCZ cooler @idle, 28c. Under linpack test, 42c.

Core Temps.

Stock cooler @idle, 40c. Under linpack test, 64c
OCZ cooler @idle, 36c. Under linpack test, 52c.

Cons: Fins are somewhat fragile. Not a big deal though. Just don't go kickin it around and you'll be alright.

Bought the retention bracket for it from Xigmatek and after installing it I realized that it's kinda ridiculous that the cooler does not come with one. Oh well, it was only $10.

VERY LARGE! I was able to fit it in my mid tower, but just barely. There is only about 1/4 in. clearance with my side panel and forget about North or South bridge coolers, there's no room.

Other Thoughts: Don't even think about installing this cooler on an LGA 775 with out using a retention bracket on the back of the mobo. I know it sucks to have to pull your mobo, but it's much better than the stock push pins. Quite the bonehead move on intel's part.

Pros: -Cost
-Great Cooler

Cons: -heavy
-Huge(although that really isn't much of a con)
-Should come with extra rubber mounting screws as I can see them breaking fairly easily.

Other Thoughts: cooling my AMD PII 940 with ease.

Pros: Great cooler that dropped my q6600 from an average overall temp of 45c on the stock cooler down to an average of 25c idle. My proc sees temps as high as about 34c under full load when I'm gaming. On the old cooler, I saw temps hit as high as ~60c under load. I highly recommend using high quality thermal paste such as "quick silver" with this processor. The cheap white stuff just doesn't cut it.

Cons: I didn't buy it from NewEgg. =(

Other Thoughts: Many people complain about this blocking the memory and in it's default configuration (fan pushing air through the heatsink) in can hang over the RAM slots however, the fan is very versitile and can be installed on the heatsink in two different ways, either pushing the air through or pulling the air through and the heatsink itself can be installed facing all 4 directions giving you a total of 8 possible configurations to fit almost any system. If it doesn't work in the default, play with it in others and I'll bet you can find one of the 8 that will work.

Make sure that you've got the height clearance as this thing is quite tall. It fits just fine in my Coolermaster HAF case(about 1.5 inches of clearance between the top of the sink and the case side) as well as my wife's Antec 900 case(about 3/4 inch clearance). I can't speak to other cases though.

Pros: Fantastic cooler. I have a Q6600 @ 3GHz right now in an Antec 1200. During usual computing all 4 cores stay under 30c (26, 28, 23, 25 right now). Prime 95 stress tests never go above 50c. (Ambient room temps also are a factor, so everybody's temps will be different). Great cooling for the price. Rivals most of the coolers that cost 10-20% more.

Cons: 1) Push pins. Takes a lot of force to push them in, and for some reason, I could only get 3 of the 4 pins all the way in. Trying to push them in bows the board quite a bit, and that of course, is always risky. Every so often under full load (rendering 3d scenes) I would notice my temps climbing all the way to 70c. Took the side of my case off only to see that one of the loose pins was all the way out of its hole. 2 or 3 times within the span of a couple months I'd have to take the side of the case off and push the loose pin back in as far as it would go. Once the pins were back in my load temps dropped to <50c.

2) Mounting the fan onto the fins is quite the test of patience. Took me about an hour to get the first rubber nub into place. I eventually started using a screwdriver to kind of wedge them into place. The rubber nubs are resilient, so, do what you gotta do to get it on.

Other Thoughts: As simple as the push pins are supposed to be, they're pretty troublesome. I ended up picking up an LGA 775 Bolt Thru kit and mounted it firmly once and for all. I'm not sure why OCZ doesn't include one with the cooler. Nobody ever wants to take their motherboard out for the sake of installing a CPU cooler, but, it's worth it in the long run.

Although I didn't have the best of luck with the push pins, other folks might, so, that's entirely up to you. But because of my personal experience, I took away one star.