My experience with Zalman HSF

[ThermalWank]

I just bought a Zalman VF900 VGA HSF and a CNPS9500 CPU HSF and they are worth the money.

The VF900 really brought the temp down on my 7900GT. It went from 50c idle to 40c. If you have a recent card with a sucky HSF then this is the one to get. Comes with memory HS's also....enough for 256mb.

The CNPS9500 was pretty good although I was hoping for better. My opty 148 dropped 5c at idle and the temps stayed the same with a 200mhz overclock. ( 40c / 2.2ghz to 2.4ghz ) It might drop more during the winter when the room temp stays around 70F. ( room temp right now is 77F )

I used Arctic Silver 5 for both HSF's. Fan speed was turn to max on both. Sound level was alittle louder than the case fans ( 3 120mm's at 2000rpms ) but well within acceptable levels.

Dont let anyone fool you. They were both pretty easy to install and I didnt have to replace the backplate or mounting bracket for the opty. All you have to do is use the screws that come with the motherboard.

Overall a good buy for around a hundred bucks at newegg. Anybody looking for better is going to have to use water cooling.

 

[shawnlizzle =]]

i agree both products are wonders of engineering, especially the 9500. as for the temperatures, they are usually off by a lot. software sensors arn't accurate at all, you should try to push taht opty further =D

 

[ThermalWank]

Hey shawnlizzle,

I just pushed it too far on the overclocking and almost fried the raid chip. Dont ask me how but when the MB resetted it said it couldnt read the disk...ya know, disk read error. Anyways, I checked the bios and it showed the raid disabled so I re-enabled it and everything was cool. Man!, talk about freaking out, I thought my $400 raptor array was toast!

Well, I was able to push the opty to 2.6ghz. Thats a 400mhz overclock from 2.2ghz by losening the timmings on the ram from 3-3-3-8 to 3-4-4-8 ( 2 1G's sticks of corsair ) and increasing the bus speed from 200mhz to 240mhz. Did all that on stock CPU voltage!!! WOOHOO!!!

Looks like that Zalman 9500 works better at overclock temps than at idle. Its keeping my opty at the same temps as stock speed with a stock cooler. ( 38c-40c ) SWEET!!! :twisted:

 

[shawnlizzle =]]

you can push waay past 2.6, my 3700 sandy goes up to 2.9 8)

pump the voltage, and put a divider up, thoes 939 opties are truly beasts

 

[bigsby]

I just bought my friend a Zalman 9500 and it rocks the casbah. There is almost no difference in temperatures on his opty 165 wheter you have it on max or minimum. We have the mobo set to turn on the cpu fan when the cpu gets to 32 degrees celcius and it stays off half the time when it's not doing anything intensive. When the fan is on max, running everything maxed out and the cpu at 2200 from 1800 (note, he hasn't started doing serious overclocking on it yet, he only got it last week), it never gets to 38 degrees Celcius. The cooler fits perfectly in his Antec Sonata II and DFI Lanparty board, the exhaust fan is almost right behind it. The noise that comes from it is almost nix as well. Overall I'm super happy about this cooler, and if it weren't for the fact that I'm building my own water cooling setup right now for my next AM2 rig, I'd get one for myself. Damn they're sexy!

 

[unsmart]

Your opty should go way higher my 146 is at 2.75[750mh oc] with stock hsf[42c load] and a .25 overvolt. Did you try dropping the ram reference speeds to 166[ mine crashes at 133?] or lowwer. I believe my block is in the northbridge temp at the higher clocks it will run at 2.95 with the NV4 at 1.75 but not to long. I think most nv4's won't do over 230-240 true fsb without some overvolting.

 

[mcgruff]

Anybody looking for better is going to have to use water cooling.

Or maybe a Scythe? The Zalman isn't bad but it's not the best and certainly not the cheapest. I guess it would win top spot for Best Ornamental Heatsink though, if that's what you're looking for.

 

[ThermalWank]

Hey unsmart and shawnlizzle ,

I can get it to 2.8ghz but I have to relax the ram timmings way too much. I never heard of dropping the ram reference speeds. Does it really help that much? While the Zalman cooler is doing a good job at OC'd idle temps I'm afraid of what the temps would look like at full load playing games overclocked at 2.8ghz.

 

[shawnlizzle =]]

its also called putting a divider up, making your cpu and ram speeds different. the real world performance difference is really low and you can push your cpu way farther. i say this because i can see that your ram is holding you back and you can relax the speed of the ram.

 

[unsmart]

By lowwering your ram to 166mh[pc333] from the 200mh[pc400] it's at now you get a 484mh[44x11] oc on your cpu before the ram has to raise above stock[200mh]. This way you can keep your timings tight and still push your cpu. Also putting your ht to 4x instead of 5x will help, your ht should be kept under 1000mh[ 200x5 or 250x4].
The higher you push the front side bus the more power your northbridge needs and your ram this makes heat and can crash the system just like a cpu over heating. The cpu hsf is graet but only part of the cooling, air flow is needed over the whole board. Zalman makes a good passive nb heat sink from what I've read.

 

[ThermalWank]

Hey unsmart and shawnlizzle ,

I took your advice and just got done overclocking the CPU to 3ghz unstable. 2.9ghz is also unstable. Looks like 2.8ghz is the sweet spot. I dropped the ram speed to 333mhz and was able to OC up to 270mhz bus speed on the NV4 chipset using a HTT x 3 to keep the speed below 1000mhz. Hell, I was also able to drop the CAS timming from 3 to 2.5 on corsair XMS 2gig kit. SWEET!!! 8)

By the way, I didnt use any memory tests or games. I just let it boot to windows and played around with the control panel. Either way, the Zalman worked like a champ and kept the temps down to around 40c-42c at low fan speed!!! 8O

 

[unsmart]

That is sweet! Have you overvolted anything yet? With some tweaks and luck you should get to around 3gh. You could try 133mh mine[msi neo4 sli with 1gb ocz ] is unstable at that setting but it may work for you and give a 726mh oc before hitting 200mh.

 

[ThermalWank]

The cool thing was I was able to do all that on stock voltage for both the CPU and the RAM. ( using a ASUS AN8 MB ) Anyway, I'm alittle afraid to overvolt anything. I mean, those are some pretty damn good results as is and I need this PC to last awhile so I think I'm gonna stay with a OC of around 2.6ghz-2.8ghz depending on load temps after some gaming. Got a question for ya....I can get 2.6ghz at either 400mhz or at 333mhz with lower CAS timming and a higher FSB speed....which should I chose?

 

[ANIA_fanboy]

I've used Zalman for a few builds andI have to say that it is the best air cooled solution I've found thus far!

 

[ThermalWank]

Zalman has turned me into a fanboy. LOL! :lol: On a serious note, I couldnt overclock past 2.4ghz without the CPU getting too hot under load with a stock AMD cooler. With the Zalman I can go all the way to 3ghz although its unstable without upping the voltage. Inorder to really take advantage of the cooling you need to overclock to get those heatpipes working.

 

[unsmart]

Thats a good question and one you may have to run benches for the answer. I would think if you can get 2.8gh with 229mh[ram speed] 2.5cl at 333mh setting then that beats the 2.6gh at 400mh. But if your staying at 2.6 then it may be close, 240mh 3cl vs 211mh 2.5cl. It seems the 240mh may win in most apps. Your in 1t timings right, that makes a big difference.

 

[ThermalWank]

Hey unsmart,

Yeah, I'm in 1t ram timings. You know of any good bench software I can download? I was thinking of overclocking my NV 7900GT GPU next. I heard coolbits is good for that. What do you think?