Can Low-Cost Coolers Compete?
Zalman’s CNPS9700 has held the top spot in the air-cooling category of our cooler charts for the past 18 months now. This makes it a reference against which all new products tested in this comparison are measured. Since the Zalman isn’t exactly a bargain at a price of nearly $80, many buyers choose less expensive alternatives - often regretting their choice later. In the fourth part of our CPU Cooler Charts 2008, we take a look at six new coolers. We’ve also included Zalman’s new CNPS9700 LED to see if it can still keep up with the newer models.
We got a good deal of reader feedback asking us for our opinion on Xigmatek’s products, which can often be found at much lower prices than competing coolers. For this reason we decided to include the company’s two most popular models, the HDT-S1283 and the XP-S964, in our comparison.
Previous installments of this series:
- CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part 1 - Losing your Cool?
- CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part 2 - Junk or Jewel?
- CPU Cooler Charts 2008, Part 3 - Are Box Coolers any Good?
3R System | Antazone | Arctic Cooling |
Asus | Cooler Master | Coolink |
CoolJag | EKL | Foxconn |
Gigabyte | Glacialtech | Hiper |
JouJye Dynatron | MSI | Nexus |
Noctua | OCZ | Scythe |
Silentmaxx | Silverstone | Spire |
Tacens | Thermaltake | Titan |
Verax | Xigmatek | Zalman |
Zaward | Zerotherm | Row 9 - Cell 2 |
If you are interested in our test methodology and how we rate the products, feel free to read up on these points here: