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Zalman CNPS9500 LED CPU Cooler

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Posted by Matt under Other Components

Zalman is pretty Cool Pros: The best in air cooling. Install wasn’t difficult but not for the novice.Cons: Price is steep. Dismantling of PC to install. Not for all motherboards due to size.The Bottom Line: If I could afford it I’d put these in all of my PC’s (where they’d fit). Tried this unit on a couple different CPU’s since I purchased it in January of 2007. CPU’s used with this unit: Athlon64 3700 Socket 754 and Intel Core2Duo e6600.I was going to try it on the Dell XPS 410 with an e6300 CPU but didn’t want to remove the motherboard from the Dell in order to install it since that would void any warranty with my Dell.With this thing in hand and my daughter using my old PC I decided to put this on her (now old) PC. Her old PC was an Athlon64 3700 CPU Clawhammer version with 1mb L2 cache running at the stock clock of 2.4Ghz. I removed the hunk of copper with a Thermatake fan on it and used Arctic Silver cleaning solution to clean the CPU’s heat shield followed by the Arctic Silver surface preparing solution… doing the same to the new Zalman 9500LED HSF. Installation: You have to remove your motherboard to install this unit no bones about it. Install wasn’t too difficult and as the prior review states was pretty straight forward. My primary concern was which way to face the fan so I could move the hot air out of my case efficiently. Since I have a 120mm rear-mounted case fan in my Cooler Master Centurion 5 (see review here : http://www.epinions.com/content_405422968452 ) and also have a Cooler Master 600w PSU with a 120mm fan bottom-mounted sucking air from the CPU section I opted to put the heat blowing UP into the PSU. I may change this design soon and post an update on cooling/effects later. Getting the brackets to line up on the socket 754 CPU was a little cumbersome but nothing worth doing is easy. Plugged the 3-pin connector into the CPU fan header on my motherboard and went into boot mode. Effects:Athlon64 3700 temps went from 48/59C (idle/load) to 34/41C I never used the stock HSF included with the e6600 CPU so I can’t compare this HSF’s cooling with anything else. My temps with the e6600 are 34C/39C (idle/load). CPU is overclocked to 3.2Ghz from the stock 2.4Ghz of the e6600. Temps are monitored with Everest and are read after 1 hour of non-stop gaming with America’s Army (directX 9x based game where FPS’s top out at 100-ish with a great video card). CPU levels on my e6600 rarely reach 100% on both cores and never stay there long even when gaming. SO I ran 3dMark06 4 times in efforts to tax the CPU and get it warmed up. Temps stayed the same during all testing. Bottom Line: This is a MUST have HSF kit for those with room for it. Those with home-made PC’s in mid-tower cases should have no problem since Zalman takes it into consideration that motherboard manufacturers like to put Mosfets and Capacitors around the area of the CPU socket. Some Northbridge/Mosfet heatsinks and heat pipe configs seen on newer motherboards may get in the way but the popularity of this HSF and other large HSF’s seems to be pushing motherboard manufacturers to clear the area for us to put larger HSF’s on our CPU’s. The fan is audible in my case but not too loud.Recommended:Yes