Zalman New Copper HS [Archive] - CNCzone.com-The Largest Machinist Community on the net!

WallCrawler

09-06-2005, 03:19 PM

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/ot...cnps9500_6.html

Performance

Without the Fan Mate 2 fan rotation speed manager, the fan works at 2600-2700rpm generating not very loud but pretty distinct sound. Once Fan Mate 2 is connected the fan rotation speed starts to vary between 1350 and 2400rpm. Moreover, when the fan rotation speed is maximum, you don’t hear it at all, as it vanishes behind the noise from the graphics card and PSU fan. We decided to run our tests in this particular operation mode.

The results turned out really impressive. The CPU running at 4.06GHz warmed only up to 56.5o C! 13o C difference compared with what Zalman CNPS7700Cu showed working at the maximum 2,000rpm fan speed, while our hero worked at the reduced speed of 2,400rpm. The cooler managed to cope with the overclocked CPU without any problems: the temperature didn’t go beyond 62.5o C.

This is an indisputable victory of the new cooler over its old buddy. However, Zalman’s slogan claims that with CNPS9500 LED you get "Air-Cooled CPU Cooler with Water-Cooling Performance". Is this true? To prove this point we installed Gigabyte 3D Galaxy liquid cooling system and ran the same benchmarks again. The results are summed up in the table below:

Cooling system
Zalman CNPS7700Cu
Gigabyte 3D Galaxy
Zalman CNPS9500 LED
Fan diameter and rotation speed
120mm / 2000rpm
120mm / 1800rpm
92mm / 2400rpm
Intel Pentium 4
4.06GHz, 1.35V
69.5°C
57.5°C
56.6°C
Intel Pentium 4
4.2GHz, 1.425V
64.7°C
62.5°C
As you see, the Zalman CNPS9500 LED cooler based on heat-pipe technology is really as efficient as a liquid cooling system. However, I will follow in Zalman’s footsteps and will not state with 100% certainty, that their new offspring is 100% better than a liquid cooling solution. During our tests all three systems generated about the same level of noise. However, at this point Zalman CNPS7700Cu worked at the top of its capacity, and hence the new Zalman CNPS9500 LED really does outperform the predecessor at all extents.

We cannot say the same about the Gigabyte 3D Galaxy cooling system. It is a very good solution, with thoroughly considered details, and it hasn’t yet exhausted its potential. The fan rotation speed can be increased, so that the system will catch up with Zalman CNPS9500 LED and even outperform it, although the level of noise it will generate in that case won’t be close to something acceptable. According to my subjective opinion, Gigabyte 3D Galaxy working at 1,800rpm is louder than Zalman CNPS9500 LED working at 2,400rpm. Besides the fan on top of the heatsink, you also hear the pump working and the fan cooling down processor voltage regulator components.

Conclusion

So, since the cooling abilities of the Zalman CNPS9500 LED and a liquid cooling system are about the same, it is different things that start to matter more. For example, Gigabyte 3D Galaxy leads the heat outside the system case, and allows upgrading the graphics card cooling system to water cooling later on. This is an indisputable advantage. As for the advantages our Zalman CNPS9500 LED can boast, we should definitely mention simple installation, compact size and affordable price. The new cooler won’t be cheap, of course, but it will cost at least 2-3 times less than a liquid cooling system of about the same efficiency. According to Zalman, the cooler will be available in US by the end of September and it will be retailed around $80.

Zalman once again proved up to our expectations and designed a true masterpiece of the cooling art. Creativity and skills of Zalman engineers is really impressive and right now we can hardly believe that someone out there will be able to outpace them here. Maybe only they themselves can one day offer something even better. The entire history of Zalman Company indicates that they surely have something up their sleeve to surprise us later on.

In conclusion to our today’s test session I would like to say the following. I really liked Gigabyte 3D Galaxy cooling system when we first tested it, and I was even thinking of getting one for myself. But now it looks like I’d better wait for Zalman CNPS9500 LED to hit the shelves.
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