ZALMAN CNPS7000-CU Review

Intro

Zalman is well known for making super quiet products, and this is no exception.  The CNPS7000-CU has the ability to be dead silent, or at "full blast" but still at an unobtrusive sound level.  The first thing I had thought when looking at this heat sink is, WOW that is big!  It seems that big and heat sink are right next to each other in Zalman's vocabulary as the two products I have now used of theirs are just that.  When you look at the pictures, take a few seconds and think just how huge it is!  That is a 92mm fan!  Not an 80mm!

Features and Thoughts

The CHPS7000-CU is meant to be a quiet heat sink.  And it executes that job exquisitely.  It comes with a variable fan speed adjuster, which just changes the voltage to the fan making the fan run slower, and thus, quieter.  At the lowest fan speed (6w, 20dB, 1350rpm), it is going very slow, and at the highest fan speed it is going pretty fast (11w, 25dB, 2400RPM), but still isn't annoying loud as other fans are.  There was also no vibration during testing which is always good.  The craftsman ship on this heat sink is quite beautiful and ingenious.  Basically they took a whole bunch of blades of copper, squished them together in the center, then put spacers in-between the blades which give it the circular look, and milled the bottom of it.  Lastly, this is a rather heavy heat sink!  The weight of it is 773g which is 323g over the maximum specified weight by Intel, which is 450g!

The install was semi tricky.  What you've got to do is take two U-shaped  pieces of aluminum and hook them on the black plastic connector on the motherboard.  There are two threaded holes on the center of each U.  You then put two screws into a clip that goes across the center of the heat sink and screw it down.  The reason this is tricky is because for the first one, you have to tilt the heat sink a little bit to get the screw in.  Getting the first one in gave me some problems, but once I had it in a little bit, I did the second one by applying some pressure.  When it got firm, I started screwing the first screw, and when that got totally tight, I went back to the other and finished screwing in that one.  After that you're set!  It's a good design, and after you do it once, from then on I would think you'd be able to get the hang of it and do it quickly.

Also, the one last interesting feature of this heat sink is that it can be used on a Pentium 4 as well as Athlon 64 processors!  I'm not sure if this is such a great feature though (or if it's just a marketing gimmick), as by the time the Athlon 64 is out, I'm sure a plethora of new heat sinks will be out. But still, if you have a Pentium 4 now and you plan on upgrading later then maybe this would be the heat sink for you.

Pictures

Pretty eh?	More eyecandy :)	Nicely finished bottom	Box (note voltage controller)	Top shot
Comparison with SLK-800A + 80mm Tornado	Top Comparison		Installed (Note the hold down clip)	A good idea of the size of this beast

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