Heatsink Construction & Design
Heatsink Construction & Design
Unlike most reviews where we start off with general impressions and work our way to the bottom, lets buck the trend and start at the base; after all, the base of this unit is one of its two main claims to fame (the other being the cooling fin assembly which we will get to shortly).
As you can see in the above photo, the Vendetta 2 has a very similar base to the reference design Xigmatek S1283, however this one is finished a lot better with the copper heatpipes not only being perfectly flat (as they are on the Xigmatek…if one ignores the fact this base is not a homogeneous chunk of metal) but they are also polished to a lot better. Of course, there are still some minor marks on the heatpipes but any way you slice it, this cooler’s base it well above average and certainly goes a long way to justifying the additional expense of it over the Xigmatek unit we have been discussing until now.
As mentioned before this CPU cooling solution is in a lot of ways a clone of the Xigmatek S1283 and this is idea is reinforced by the mounting “wings” for the 775 pushpins and the double cut in the top of the base for the AM2 mounting bracket. This is not a bad thing per say, as pushpin installations are usually faster and easier than backplate based systems.
That being said, it is too bad that OCZ didn’t take the time and effort to upgrade this design to a back plate system; we say this because while the backplate installation may be more time consuming it does provide a stabler mounting platform and one which delivers a more even mounting pressure (as plastic is malleable and may deform at slightly different rates from corner to corner). Hopefully, this will be addressed in a future revision (like a Vendetta 3 for example, which we are sure OCZ will come out with at some point in the future).
For anyone who has never seen the iconic looking Vendetta series of CPU cooling solutions a little bit of an overview is in order. The Vendetta 2 is a tower style cooler which has three large 8mm heatpipes, two of which start at the top left and go down to the base, are flattened to act as a majority of said base and then zoom back up to terminate at the top right side. In between the flattened heatpipes are metal strips which add stability and support to the unit, and in point of fact it is more accurate to say the three channels for the heatpipes have been carved out the solid metal base rather than to say the metal strips have been added in afterwords.
All in all, it is fairly typical setup with the exception of the unique Direct Touch heatsink base. As for its dimensions, it all is fairly typical for a medium size tower cooler; all in all, the Vendetta 2 weight about 600grams and is 159mm high by 120mm wide by 50mm deep. To put it another way it is technically has the dimensions of the reference Xigmatek yet is a bit deeper because of those peaks (or tips of the double V) are not taken into the depth measurement.
While the heatpipes may be considered a refinement on an already existing technology (as heatpipes have been around for a while, and it is just them acting as the base which is new), OCZ has taken a unique approach when it comes to the cooling fin assembly. In total you have 50 of those closely spaced aluminum fins arranged on top of one another; and while this is down from the 53 the Xigmatek has, the OCZ fins are not only deeper (with a unique peaked design) they also have numerous indentations in them. These small bumps act much like boulders in a stream act on a flowing river. To understand this analogy you must first understand that air can be considered a very thin fluid medium and thus fluid dynamics does play a large role in effective thermal dissipation.
What these small bumps do is slightly change the direction of the air moving through the fins and by changing their direction they also slightly change the velocity of the air (as the air slows down when it meets this added resistance and then again changes direction to flow around the obstructions). Going back to our analogy think of a fast moving river, the water molecules are under pressure from the water molecules behind them and in effect are pushing them along by pressure (lets ignore gravity and effects of the moon for this simplified analogy). As those fast moving water molecules slam into the fully submerged boulders some of the water will go around the left, some the right and some over the top. While this happens those molecules slow down as they have to push other molecules out of their way to get back into the “fast lane”. This movement causes small eddies to spontaneously occur. In these eddies, the fluid spins much like a small whirlpool before being pushed along by the force of the water. If you were to precisely measure the water temperature in the eddies it would be slightly different than the rest of the river.
What all this means for the OCZ Vendetta 2, not only is some of the air slowing down and picking up more waste heat from the cooling fins, this air is also sticking around longer and thus picking up even more of the heat before being ejected out the back of the cooler. Heck, because of these little bumps more air is probably being directed out the back of the cooler and dissuaded from spilling out the sides (as I am sure OCZ’s engineers designed it properly to do this, and why wouldn’t they as they were obviously smart enough to figure all this out in the first place!). The only potential downside to this ingenious use of fluid dynamics is it may increase the static pressure of the air inside the fins if not done properly, but it would take a super computer and bunch of PHD’s to figure out (and that’s way above my pay grade). Potentially higher pressure or no, this design is a very nice tweak and it will be interesting to see if it translates into decreased CPU temperatures!
