Anyone else buy a Vendetta 2 ?

laezyre

Senior member
Apr 19, 2008
200
3
45
I just bought an OCZ Vendetta 2 at buy.com for $44. I read a few reviews that impressed me. I was wondering if anyone had a chance to use it yet. If so I have two questions:
1) How is it performing?
2) How was installation? I have a mid tower ATX that should work according to the given measurements, but I'm still a little worried.

Thanks
 

laezyre

Senior member
Apr 19, 2008
200
3
45
I can't get that link to work. It keeps giving an error and showing me a picture of a tabby cat.

I was surprised at the price. A few days ago it was out of stock everywhere. Delivery is free at buy.com, but only for the 5-7 day option. Can anyone wait that long? I paid for the 2-3 business day delivery for another 8 bucks.
 

OmniOck

Member
Apr 19, 2008
26
0
0
I bought one for my Q9450. Still waiting for it to arrive, but I'll post results along with my build logs and showcase.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,367
1,903
126
Per the specs posted at OCZ and TR, the Vendetta 2 is almost exactly conformable to the dimensions of the TRUE. One or the other has a different depth (width across the narrowest dimension of the fins), but I think it's a difference in order of magnitude similar to a half-inch.

Further, the base of the Vendetta seems symmetrical with the fins and pipes. Therefore, if -- as I -- you built motherboard ducts custom-fitted to your TRUE, you should be able to replace the TRUE with the Vendetta 2 without modding the ducts much at all. Further, the difference in "depth" shouldn't affect clearance with rear exhaust fans, if there was at least an inch's clearance to begin with.

Here's some advice for testing the Vendetta 2.

If possible, obtain and calibrate a digital thermometer such as you would find at Radio Shack. To calibrate it, wrap the sensor or transmitter in a zip-loc bag, and seal after pressing out as much of the air as possible. The bag should make contact with almost all of the surface area on the unit.

Bury the bag in a large bowl filled with ice-cubes, and add cold water. Wait a couple hours or more for the water and thermometer to equilibrate. Read the digital result. Use the difference of the result and 32F degrees to adjust your temperature readings with the thermometer.

When you test the cooler, make a note of the processor spec for posting here, and note the stock and over-clock speeds. You can test the cooler with stock settings alone, or test the cooler with both stock and overclock settings, but the stock settings are sufficient so that anyone can adjust to guesstimates of their overclocked thermal power wattage.

Use CORETEMP with the logging feature turned ON. Set the program to log temperatures every 8,000 milliseconds. This will record a reading every 8 seconds in your temperature log for each core.

Make a note of ROOM AMBIENT corrected for the thermometer reading before and after an hour's testing, or every so many minutes if you're inclined to that sort of anal-retentive accuracy. If your room temperature is fairly stable, the "before and after" approach should be sufficient.

Use PRIME95's multi-core "small-FFTs" torture-test, and test for a full hour of readings.

You can then close CORETEMP, access the log file with MS Notepad, and block-copy an hour's sample of load readings into another Notepad file so that you can save it and import it into MS Excel. From there, you can compute minimums, maximums, averages and standard error estimates, and you can make graphs showing the frequency distribution of temperature readings over a range from the minimum to the maximum temperatures as recorded in the log file. You should be able to compare the maximum and average values to published benchmark results if the processor TDP's are similar, after adjusting linearly for room-ambient.

This should prove or disprove the published benchtest results -- within some reasonable range of accuracy. If the processor TDPs between your test processor and that of the bench review are significantly different, you should have to adjust for the difference using the formula for thermal resistance. Even so, if you publish your results here and specify the TDP load-thermal-wattage of your processor with the results, it should be very useful to everyone else for decisions about migrating from the TRUE to the Vendetta 2.

By the way -- the earlier model Vendetta -- in review results -- is pretty much "blown away" by the TRUE in benchmark tests.

 

Gillbot

Lifer
Jan 11, 2001
28,830
17
81
I just want to know if it will fit in my case. ;) The true is JUST too tall which seems to rule out just about every other 120mm cooler since they mimmick the true's dimensions.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,367
1,903
126
Gillbot: As Slick Willie used to say: "Ah feel yur pain!"

[And for another candidate, Ah feel disdain . . . but this isn't the political forum. :laugh: ]

Two things can be done.

If you have a side-panel with a vented-metal area in the location corresponding to the "top" of the cooler, and the obstruction to clearance can be measured in eighths of an inch, you can consider doing a little "metal-work" with a ball-pean hammer to make a shallow extrusion on the case-side-panel. There may be other solutions involving Lexan windows, the clearance due to window-grommets, and the possibility of heat-gun shaping of Lexan to make an extrusion that clears the top of the cooler of interest.

If you don't want to do that, then as far as I can see at the moment, your choice is limited to the TR Ultima 90.
 

Gillbot

Lifer
Jan 11, 2001
28,830
17
81
I'd have to hack the side like we did to my brother's case. He has the same one with the TRUE. I guess the Ultima-90 is the only option as most of the ones that run with the TRUE are 120 in size.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,367
1,903
126
My brother's case is a Centurion. I gave him a 7600 GT AGP card with a TR heatpipe cooler that was notorious for the same sort of problem. The case had a "modders-mesh-type" fan-shaped perforation in the side, and we simply put a dish-shaped extrusion in it -- actually aesthetically consistent with another 'bubble" in the side-panel metal that was part of the manufactured design.

But the TRUE or something like it would require more than a 3"-diameter dish-shaped extrusion . . .
 

Gillbot

Lifer
Jan 11, 2001
28,830
17
81
I could try to "dent it" but since the cooler sits so close to the rear, it'd be hard to do cleanly.
 

Instan00dles

Golden Member
Jun 15, 2001
1,174
1
81
I have one running on an amd 5000+ black box. right now its been oc'ed to 3ghz. Its idles at 27c and under full load playing my ps2 emu it runs at 39c. as for the size.. I cant put the side of my case on because it is so damn big, looking for a htpc case it might fit into.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 28, 2005
21,053
3,537
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rawr... pushpin's blow tho. :X


 

buffpinoy

Member
Feb 8, 2007
34
0
0
I have one also cooling a Q6600 and after reading all these glowing reviews online of the Vendetta 2, I'm starting to think mine might be defective. I have a Q6600 @ 3.1ghz w/ 1.224V and coretemp reading shows 65/61/65/65 degrees with prime95 small FFT's running for 1 hour with open case. Idle temps are 43/41/42/42. I tried reseating and reapplying AS5 several times and still get the same results. Is it possible that my vendetta 2 might be defective? I'm not getting nowhere near the temps that's being posted online.
 

Zapper48

Member
Oct 7, 2007
167
0
0
I have the Vendetta 2 and I really like it. I did replace the push pins with the TR 775 bolt-thru kit:D
 

DaQuteness

Senior member
Mar 6, 2008
200
34
86
Originally posted by: buffpinoy
I have one also cooling a Q6600 and after reading all these glowing reviews online of the Vendetta 2, I'm starting to think mine might be defective. I have a Q6600 @ 3.1ghz w/ 1.224V and coretemp reading shows 65/61/65/65 degrees with prime95 small FFT's running for 1 hour with open case. Idle temps are 43/41/42/42. I tried reseating and reapplying AS5 several times and still get the same results. Is it possible that my vendetta 2 might be defective? I'm not getting nowhere near the temps that's being posted online.

The only defect it could have is to have an off-leveled base or faulty pushpins.

If you can, i strongly suggest:

1. You try it on a different cpu before doing anything else. See if the temps keep going high. If so, then you might have serious problem.
2.AS5 has that break-in period but even so the temps are high, have you followed instructions? (thin line across center or 2 thinner lines across the cores or one big blob in the middle, but i wouldn't suggest this one though...)
3.Try using a backplate, pushpins are totally ineffective IMO.
 

laezyre

Senior member
Apr 19, 2008
200
3
45
Buy.com emailed me two days after I ordered the v2 telling me it was out of stock and may be for a while. I cancelled my order, got cold feet about the size of the vendetta 2, and ordered the vendetta original. I have a mid tower coolermaster centurion case, and 'm sure the vendetta will fit. I just hope I didn't make a mistake...

BTW, where can you order the TR 775 bolt through kit?

 

laezyre

Senior member
Apr 19, 2008
200
3
45
Thanks for the link Zapper. The only hassle is removing the mobo, it appears.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
16,367
1,903
126
Originally posted by: DaQuteness
Originally posted by: buffpinoy
I have one also cooling a Q6600 and after reading all these glowing reviews online of the Vendetta 2, I'm starting to think mine might be defective. I have a Q6600 @ 3.1ghz w/ 1.224V and coretemp reading shows 65/61/65/65 degrees with prime95 small FFT's running for 1 hour with open case. Idle temps are 43/41/42/42. I tried reseating and reapplying AS5 several times and still get the same results. Is it possible that my vendetta 2 might be defective? I'm not getting nowhere near the temps that's being posted online.

The only defect it could have is to have an off-leveled base or faulty pushpins.

If you can, i strongly suggest:

1. You try it on a different cpu before doing anything else. See if the temps keep going high. If so, then you might have serious problem.
2.AS5 has that break-in period but even so the temps are high, have you followed instructions? (thin line across center or 2 thinner lines across the cores or one big blob in the middle, but i wouldn't suggest this one though...)
3.Try using a backplate, pushpins are totally ineffective IMO.

My remark here may be a bit delayed. Look at the spread between your idle and load values. If you're testing with PRIME95 multi-core version, the 20+C degree spread isn't much different from what I have at 79F room-ambient -- high-core idle around 46C and high-core load at about 66C -- using a TR-U120-Extreme and diamond paste.

The Vendetta 2 should give some degrees' improvement over the TRUE, but your choice of thermal paste would reduce the improvement over my TRUE setup.

I'm wondering if your status-quo may be the result of several things: choice of case and fans; deployment of fans; uneven contact with the IHS; etc.

First -- you might try lapping the IHS of the processor, and that should probably give you around a 5C-degree improvement if you take off the IHS' nickel-plating.
 

toadeater

Senior member
Jul 16, 2007
488
0
0
Originally posted by: laezyre
Buy.com emailed me two days after I ordered the v2 telling me it was out of stock and may be for a while. I cancelled my order, got cold feet about the size of the vendetta 2, and ordered the vendetta original. I have a mid tower coolermaster centurion case, and 'm sure the vendetta will fit. I just hope I didn't make a mistake...

The original 92mm Vendetta is a couple of degrees better than the AC Freezer 7 Pro, so it's not a bad deal unless you paid $40 for it or something.