With the Gladiator MAX OCZ released a product to the market that on one side is impressive, and on the other side .. not as impressive as the Vendetta 2 when it comes to pure performance. The trick here however is related to the purpose and intention of your CPU cooler. The Vendetta series have a much more noisy fan, yet it creates so much more airflow so temps will be better.

For the Gladiator MAX OCZ tried to bring down the noise level with a 1500 RPM fan and lower airflow, yet wanted to compensate that airflow loss with the help of an additional heatpipe (Vendetta has 3 / Gladiator MAX has 4). It's however not enough to make up for the performance difference. How much that matters really is something that is in your hands. If you overclock and tweak a lot, then a Vendetta would be more recommended. For more silent operations and even a mild overclock the reality however is simple. The Gladiator MAX would have my preference. This cooler is to be considered a mainstream performance cooler with plenty of watt dissipation. If you do not plan to overclock massively, the performance is excellent. If you keep your tweak to a 'reasonable' overclock, the temperatures will still be fine, and all in a near silent performance. Which quite honestly I like very much as I'm well .. just anal when it comes to noisy PCs.

So that's my conclusion. Though the Vendetta series is more loud, their performance is better. If you like a very silent heatpipe cooler and don't plan anything rather crazy .. the Gladiator would a fine choice in weaponry.

Currently the Gladiator sells just above 40 USD, in Europe unfortunately the price is roughly 40 EUR making the product in comparison to the Vendetta 2 somewhat expensive.

But all in all, a very nice purchase for a product with a nice and user friendly design, it's quality material. I also would recommend the Gladiator MAX very much for HTPCs where you need some proper cooling, an extremely silent solution .. and though not particularly cheap, the reality is simple, it won't break the bank either. Definitely recommended.

We spotted this cooler for $41.99 at the moment of writing.

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