- Comparing Water Coolers: We Follow Your Lead
- Thermalright's New Graphics Card Coolers
- Scythe Ninja Plus takes on Three TEC Heavyweights
- Radical CPU Coolers from CoolIT
- A Beginner's Guide For WaterCooling Your PC
- Vigor's Monsoon II TEC CPU Cooler
- Thermalright's HR-03 Is A VGA Cooler Gorilla!
- VGA Heat-Pipe Cooler Roundup 2006
- Six New AMD Coolers: Cold Enough For You?
- Readers' Responses to Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil
- CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part I - Loosing Your Cool?
- CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part 3 - Are Box Coolers any Good?
- CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part 2
- Zalman 8700 NOT bad, pretty good
- Core 2 Quad and Duo Temperature Guide
- water cooling or aircooled extreme cpu?
- Combinate Water-, Air- and Heatsink-cooling system?
- does any know of a good heat sink for a x38/x48 with the stock north b
- Need build help!!
Zalman CNPS8700LED - The Real Catastrophe
Source: Tom's Hardware US – Keywords: cpu, cooler, charts, 2008
Syndication:
Zalman CNPS8700LED - The Real Catastrophe

Zalman CNPS8700LED
Zalman, a company that has built a name for itself over the past few years with its truly excellent cooler designs, thoroughly disappointed us with its new CNPS8700LED. The catastrophically designed retention mechanism is the reason why the final verdict can be nothing other than "Failed". Like all of Zalman's other models, installing this cooler requires removing the motherboard from the case to install the retention mechanism; then the cooler is fixed in place using a metal clip. However, due to the heatpipe and the very compact design, there is so little space around the cooler that the clip becomes jammed in the cramped area around it very easily. At several points during the installation procedure we were actually at a loss as to how to remove the retention clamp again. A fellow editor actually returned his model to the store out of sheer desperation.
Another problem is that the size of the cooler makes access to the retention clip very difficult, effectively making installation of this model impossible on many boards. Actually removing the cooler once mounted may not be possible on some boards since there is not enough free space around the cooler to pry the retention clip out of the mounting bracket.

The cooling performance of the CNPS8700LED is only average. At its lowest fan setting, the CPU temperature reached 80°C, while the processor is cooled to 71°C at full speed. However, the fan becomes so loud at this setting that working with the system is not a very enjoyable experience. Noise is only acceptable in the lower third of the speed spectrum, and the cooler will begin humming or droning at higher settings. The fan produces good airflow, though, so the fact that the CPU remains so hot seems to be a good indication that the heatpipes are unable to conduct the heat away from the processor effectively. It looks like Zalman's engineers need to re-evaluate their design.

Zalman sells other coolers that are far superior to this model in every respect: installation, cooling performance and noise. The cooler can be found starting at $50; considering the problems we encountered, this is much too high.

Underside

Mounting components

Retail box

| Technical Data | ||
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 100% load | idle |
| Temperature 12V | 71°C | 37°C |
| Temperature 5V | 80.5°C | 38°C |
| Noise | 45.0 dB(A) | 38.5 dB(A) |
| Fan Speed | 2380 RPM | 1100 RPM |
| Weight | 586 grams | |
| Intel Socket | 775 | |
| AMD Socket | AM2 | AM2+ |
| 939 | 754 | |
| 940 | ||

Installation
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your numbers of near 70C on every cooler is outrageous, if those numbers are true not a single one of these coolers would keep a computer stable in a closed case outside the northeast. and a couple minutes isnt a good measure of cpus final temp, if u look over a temp log after a long game session you know it creeps up. to many factors.
Bullshit article.I agree with wkornf.
If my Artic silver 5 + Scythe Katana 2 cooler(for only a massive price of 25 USD! I can keep my outdated Pentium D under 100 degrees fahrenheit,infact around HALF of these tests,even under water cooling? Wow,according to this,I should actually worry about getting a quad core because of the heat.And no,I don't have any fans in my case,it's open,only fans are from my GPU,CPU,and my PSU.
No extra 4 250mm performance fans.And an X38? That's just unbelievable.
Do you guys get the point? They maxed out everything, so the cooler could show off the best that it could do in the most extreme conditions.
A good article, i especially like the tests for installation and sound, as those are what i would look into most when purchasing a cooler, and unlike CPUs, there are usually no charts to go along with.
alot of the coolers listed of a particular design are installed all goofy like, Of course on their open setup it doesn't make much difference(i think)
but when installed in a normal ATX case, would be detrimental to the coolers performance. Especially coolers designed similar to the Noctua and Scythe Ninja plus.
I can't be certain about others but Arctic Cooling's Freezer 7 Pro is supposed to be installed like this(one would assume others of similar design would be the same)
http://bigrockies.com/media/cooler.jpg
cliffro I think to some degree you are correct but it still does not follow good practice when supposedly collecting data to represent consumer products.
As these have published manufacturer recomended installations why would you reverse it.
I recently read a review of the latest Noctua cooler at Legitreviews
where Noctua actually contacted them on this very issue... as a result they retested and found some improvement in cooling.
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/741/1/
You guys might want to reexamine the Zerotherm Nirvana NV120... I just picked one up (after much research), and all of the problems mentioned in the review seem to be fixed in the newer models... no more metal base, no more metal shavings, and near silent operation except at full speed. I've been using Zalman CNPS coolers ever since the 7000 series, and will likely be switching to the NV120 for performance systems now. Just my 2c
@guyladouche... actually it all depends which cooler you are talking about,
As said the Noctua is setup with the fan on top blowing down, which is the only config that Noctua dont support.
The Thermalright has the fan in the middle blowing up so it looks like there is no real consistancy in the test methods... but I would like to hear from the testers in case they found some reason to use each particular setup.
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Thank you, been wondering what cooler to buy for an OCed Quad, and high temps are good when dying