of the four listed which would be the better for the price?

OZC Vendetta 2 $49.00
Cooler Master Z600 $69.00
Zalman CNPS9900 $76.00
Cooler Master V8 $77.00

They will be cooling a AMDPIIX4 3.0 BE
IDLE 34C LOAD 48C with stock cooler

as for overclocking only gonna over clock to 3.6

I can't say for the coolers I haven't used. But to date, the V8 is the best aftermarket cpu cooler I have ever used. From the stock cooler that has the heat pipes, it dropped idle temps about 12 degrees. Load temps roughly the same.

If you are only overclocking to 3.5 or so, if you're cpu is like mine, you wont need much (if any) of a volt increase. Temps should be in the 30's. MB has em too

The coolermaster and zalman are of higher build quality.

I did perfer the CM v8 for the fact that it blew out right through the back of the cases duct.

In conclusion for build quality Zalman and Coolermaster. I'm pretty sure overall it's a coin toss between the two.

MB should start carrying Thermalright again (but there was probably a good reason why they stopped in the first place)

There's an unused OCZ Vendetta on kijiji right now for $25 - in case ya wanna go that route.

Ad ID: 155471636.

-edit- Ocz Vendetta 2

Thanks for the info Newf but i have a feeling im prob gonna end up going with the V8 cause i prob wont stop @3.6 lol

Well you never know.

You may hit a wall at 3.6 where even water wont help you. Although you can see how high you can get your FSB to boot and run some small doo-dads. And if you can get to 3.8 or luckily 4.0 then you'll probably need more sufficient cooling. Or just creative ideas.

When I was running the Coolit Freezone Elite on my i7 setup I was at a point in overclocking where I had to remove everything from my case in order to get enough heat dissipation off the chipset and keep components spaced out enough in order to get fans blowing properly in order to blow the hot air away from each component without restricting another fan from blowing the air to another component away if you get my "draft"

Having your computer outside of a case when overclocking is nice just for the sheer face that your GPU is throwing alot of heat. Especially when reasonably overclocked (just feel the plastic casing when your playing a 3D intensive game).

The unfortunate fact of having all your components external of a case is dirt, drinks, sneezing, god knows what can get on it. I never had a problem. Even had a cat who would jump on it and cause utter chaos..

PS in order to get some good clocks I hope you have a AMD 790 Chipset which supports ACC (Advanced clock Calibration).

ACC' keeps clock frequencies in sync and stabilize inter-chip communications between the CPU, Northbridge, Southbridge and memory. Mind you this only works for Phenom II CPU's. Particularly the Black Edition.

Yup running 790GX M4A78-E and as for the ACC well im still learning the overclocking world so as to not be stupid ill ask now the ACC should be enabled right? and as for overclocking anyone have a few good sites to read up on it? also i have the OCZ gold ddr2 1066 ram cant seem to run it any higher then 1066 im assuming that thats it limit?

Doing some reading because I was skeptical on ACC. Many say to turn it off because it was for overclocking Phenom I's (Like those things didn't perform like shit in the first place...)

So I would say just turn it off.

On track to the memory you'll actually want to slow the memory down (Remember with overclocking we're taking things one step at a time.. Think of it as being a sexual experience with your first girlfriend.)

Stop daydreaming now... Take that memory and run it at 800mhz and increase the latency in your timings. Doing this will mitigate some BSOD's during your overclock experience. Think of it as getting rid of one weak link so you can focus on increasing your FSB. Afterwards you can fine tune your memory and then overclock your video.

by increase the lat your reffering to lowering my timmings right, try to get tighter timmings?

Say you have memory with 5-5-5-15 @ 1066 Mhz

For example to loosen those up (which you want to do when overclocking or when starting your overclock) you would take them to say..

9-9-9-21 @ 800 (Pure example though)

Here is a good article to read.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/26/2