I remember back a few years ago, when I read a review on the OCZ Gladiator and because of the review I picked it up for my 1 GHz @ 1.3 GHZ system that I still use today as my main box. I  still use this system to surf the web, write reviews, and develop web pages. In the past few years my ears have gotten tuned to that 7500RPM Delta that the OCZ Gladiator came with, but I have to admit that it gets annoying at times. When OCZ gave me the chance to review the Gladiator II, I jumped on it.

Here are a few shots comparing the Gladiator I with the Gladiator II. The Gladiator II is the one on the left. You can see the higher fin count in the Gladiator II. I was going to do this review with the Gladiator I as a comparison cooler, but I decided against it because of its age and the fact that I noticed a few of the fan mounting screws where striped out. I am sure this is due to the Delta 7500RPM fan that has been spinning for some time now. I will be using the Thermaltake Volcano 9 for comparison in this review.

• ASUS A7N8X Deluxe
• AMD 1800+ 1.53 GHz @ 1.83 GHz
• 2X 256MB PC-3200

Here are a few pictures of the Gladiator II. Just like the Gladiator I, this is a very nice looking cooler. It is fitted with a 7000 RPM fan. The heat sink is 62X70X44mm so it falls into the standard size category. The fan on the other hand is 60X60X25 that pushes the cooler into the tall category. The fan is a ball bearing fan that produces 39.5 cfm. Another plus with this cooler is it has a three prong clip (which is an improvement to the one prong clip of the Gladiator I) that I was able to snap on with my finger without using a screw driver.

Like I said before the heat sink looks very good. But looks alone doesn't cool off a CPU so lets see how this cooler performs

The OCZ cooler did beat the Volcano 9 but not without a lot of noise. If your like me, and have been using a Delta for some time, then this cooler will not bother you at all. But if your sensitive to sound then  you might want to look at something else.

I wanted to add that after writing this review the Gladiator II took over for the old tired Gladiator I in my workstation. While writing this review, my workstation (1 GHz T-Bird @ 1.23 GHz) is running at 40c according to ASUS Probe.