It's no secret that heat is one of the worst enemies for electronics, especially PC hardware. When it comes to the enthusiast computer market, the initial build, the testing, and potential overclocking can all lead to stress on the system. To handle all this, you need to provide your case and components with adequate cooling to assure reliable performance and to avoid a potential catastrophe. And with overclocked dual and quad core CPUs being standard equipment in a high-end PC, cooling has become an essential part of keeping your system stable and ensuring a long component life.

Processor cooling has grown into a very big market, covering everything from basic air cooling to monstrous heatsinks to complex water-cooling setups. This diversification has led many companies to look for new and revolutionary cooling designs, all in a bid to make their products stand out from the pack. Others have taken a more standard route to product development, and carefully tweaked existing designs and offered incremental improvements in cooling and overall temperatures.

OCZ, a well known company offering a wide of range of PC hardware, has gone down the middle with their Gladiator Max CPU cooler release, as it uses the copper + aluminum mainstay, while offering a few tweaks of its own. Add in a 120mm low-noise fan and compatibility for LGA775 and AM2 sockets, and OCZ is hoping it will be one of the top air cooling solutions for your CPU.