OCZ have taken the heat sink
they use for their high-scoring Gladiator cooler and electroplated it with
silver, to create this shinier version. It's got a finger guard on the fan
now, too.
The plating looks good from
a distance, but looking at it close up, you can see that it's very thin,
and fades out a bit on edges.
The silver plating brings the
Gladiator's price up to $US34.99, and it's got the same high power Delta
fan as the top-spec regular Gladiator.
What difference should the silver
make to the cooler's performance?
None whatsoever.
Point one - a super-thin plating
of anything won't make much difference to the performance of a cooler. There's
just not enough there to matter, unless it's some sort of Larry
Niven thermal superconductor.
Point two - silver's a better
thermal conductor than copper, but only just. The difference is really too
small to matter, even for a thick layer.
There's something to be said
for putting a chunk of fine silver on the bottom of a cooler, because pure
silver is very soft, and will presumably mould itself to the tiny irregularities
of the top of the CPU, giving you a really good thermal contact. But plating
a cooler with the stuff is a purely cosmetic change.
The Delta fan on the cooler
I got for review has a slightly buzzy bearing, which might have something
to do with the fact that it only scored 0.59°C/W when I tested it - an excellent
result, but not quite as good as the plain Gladiator. The inaccuracy of
the test rig may have something to do with it as well, though.
Personally, I prefer the look
of a plain copper cooler to silver plate. But if your particular hopped-up
PC has a lot of mirror-plate in it, this cooler ought to suit your technological
decor.
