Enormous Zalman CPU cooler

[Scipionix]

Anyone ever seen or used one of these? It's two pounds of solid copper! If that isn't overkill I don't know what is. It looks beautiful though.

Zalman CNPS6500B-CU

 

[ChrisADuffy]

seen em', never used em' though I have heard they are good for a quiet system but not really for overclockers.

 

[bwass24]

Every review I've read about these things says that they are REALLY heavy and make your system very delicate. They also don't work very well. At idle they function about as well as the stock P4 cooler, but at load they are far inferior to it.

Too bad. It's a nice design, and seemed like a good idea.

 

[Blain]

I don't have the HS but I do have that 92mm fan. In quiet mode (5v I think), it's very very quiet and yet still has good air flow. I give the fan > 5 Stars <

 

[NuAGe]

yeah i heard that in theory it was a good idea but it never functioned up to expectations. It is like those orbs that were suppose to be good at cooling but were not that great when put to the test.

 

[Gogga]

I am using one of those on my P4 1.8AGhz system. It really is an enormous cooler, but it does it's job quite well.. It can also run my system without a fan @ 2.4Ghz, but I'm using a quiet Papst 8412NGM 80mm with it to overclock it! My cpu never gets over 46C on 2.6Ghz with a voltage of 1.725V. The clipping mechanism is designed quite cleverly and does a very good job of keeping that 900g monster secure on your cpu.. I've included a few screenshots to show the clipping mechanism and the massive amount of room it takes up!


Enormous heatsink?
Zalman heatsink without a fan

I'd rather use this 900g monster than the retail heatsink I got with my Cpu cause the retail heatsink really causes the motherboard to bend quite a bit which I don't like cause I think it could damage the traces in the long run.. The clipping mechanism on the Intel cooler isn't quite exactly very user friendly!

 

[Gene396]

Seems to me that is you have good air flow in and out of case; a fan would not be necessary!! LOL.

 

[Gogga]

To the contrary.. On hot days I regularly had problems with my Athlon 1.33Ghz and overheating. My room temperature is quite hot and I always have trouble keeping my case temps down. Thats the reason why I swapped out my Athlon for a P4. I have a fanmate on the YS Tech exhaust fan that is set to its lowest speed. My intake fans are the standard ADDA one's from Lian-Li also set to the lowest speed. And the Enermax 92mm fan seems to blow hot air from the PSU into the case in stead of routing it through the exhaust fan on the PSU, which should heat up a copper heatsink a bit. My computer is completely silent and not a big air displacer at all

 

[Scipionix]

I wonder if, for the same volume of air moving past a heatsink per minute, the velocity of the flow affects cooling; i.e. does a smaller volume of air moving faster cool better than a larger volume of air moving slower? I would think that the faster airflow would definitely work better. Maybe the low RPM 92 mm fan on this cooler is a problem?

 

[Gogga]

I've noticed with my Thermalright SK6 on my Athlon that copper heatsinks are very sensitive to ambient case temperatures. Removing a case fan on my Athlon system usually increased the cpu temperature by at least 3C. People also got amazing low temps using the SK6 with a Delta fan, but when used with a lower RPM fan it didn't achieve quite the same level of performance.

I also think air velocity is quite important, at least in the situation of high ambient temps. I wouldn't under estimate the influence of the quantity of air moving over the heatsink. With the standard Zalman I was able to get the same temps with the fan RPM set to 1500, while my Papst 80mm has a RPM of about 2500-2700. The Papst fan is very quiet as well so I dumped the 92mm fan and used the fanmate together with the case fan for a quieter exhaust fan