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Four new coolers on heat pipes: Autumn 2006

Author: Date: 11.10.2006

Hi-End coolers have always stood out among their cheaper brethren. It is often a huge radiator, a lot of heat pipes, and 120 mm fans. But there are coolers of a bit lower class which are not so big but carry more compact fans and of course are somehow inferior to these huge monsters at performance. The most important thing is that these coolers cost much less because you have to fork out for 45 to 75$. Today's review is devoted to a few coolers which can't catch up with the champions at performance, so they should take the niche right beneath them. Therefore, we are comparing their efficiency and the "price/quality" ratio, because it's just this parameter that is the most important for the cooler which does not pretend for uncompromising performance.

Zalman CNPS8000

The new cooler of the known Korean company is much different from what we have seen so far. The most surprising is that it's the first time the company is producing a cooler for processors that is not striving to set the world on fire. Even its reduced cardinal number hints to that: the model CPNPS8000 was released after the model CNPS9500. In fact, the new cooler offers what others haven't had so far, and we are examining it.

The cooler is shipped in a compact box which traditionally distracts the review over to describing the front side of the structure and the base. The rear side of the box presents a list of the cooler's advantages and its specifications:

Inside, the cooler is shock-proof and protected with a plastic corset that has an additional compartment for the package bundle. Cleared off all the wrappings, here comes the cooler:

Zalman CNPS8000 is of quite extraordinary design and combines the features of a regular radiator with parallel fins spiced with four heat pipes, as well as a recessed fan confined from both sides with plastic walls to keep the air flow within.

The compact copper base of the cooler transmits heat to four heat pipes which spread it over all the radiator fins. The base itself stands out with its exceptional uniformity,but the manufacturer decided not to bring it to the mirror gleam.

As we can see, the resultant design is of very small height - merely 62 mm. t's just this parameter which is of paramount importance to Zalman. The cooler CNPS8000 is primarily positioned as an efficient and light-weight solution for compact systems and thin housings. The method of fastening on the motherboard is quite original and convenient in practice: the base has special "eyes" on the sides, and these eyes are used to fasten the demountable press plate with with the cooler is fastened on a motherboard.

Both halves of the pressure plates enter into one another up to a click of the lock, and the cooler is ready for installation. As you can see on the photo, a pressing bracket for fastening on top of AMD processors hooks at the central teeth of the frame around the processor socket, and thus it fits well on any of today's AMD platforms, including Socket AM2, which is especially important in view of some shortage for coolers for this platform. To fasten on top of the Socket LGA775, a similar dismountable plate is used which has four feet, and the cooler is tightened through these feet over to the thrust plate on the reverse side of the board.

You can see all the ingredients of installation on the photo of the package bundle:

We can also note that the cooler comes bundled with Zalman Fan Mate 2, a proprietary regulator of rotational speed, which allows smoothly adjusting the fan's speed within 1400 to 2600 rpm. While busy with the assembly, you can notice the rather strong clamping of the cooler on the platform for both AMD and LGA775 processors. This is good rather than bad, but in any case you have to be very careful dismantling the cooler from AMD processors and only with a screwdriver.

The major trait of the cooler installation is the the rather wide area of the base as a sacrifice to the small height. This imposes substantial restrictions upon the free space around the processor socket. Prior to installation of Zalman CNPS8000 on your motherboard, you must be well aware that it has no high add-on components at 45 mm distance from the three sides, and 60 mm from that side towards which the bend of heat pipes will be turned. In fact, that means substantial limitations, for example, we were able to install the cooler in only one of 2(4) positions upon both the tested motherboards. On the whole, the cooler looks quite neat and compact, but there is a tradeoff of some restrictions for installation that you have to pay for. What is confusing is its price - 50 US dollars for a small cooler on heat pipes is a bit too much... Let's wait for the results of tests, but for now let's move on to the next hero of the review.

Titan TTC-NK32(34)TZ

This cooler on heat pipes has been released recently enough, together with the known thermoelectric giant Titan Amanda TEC. While the latter was aimed at the top-end of systems for cooling CPUs, then Titan TTC-NK32(34)TZ on the contrary should take up a value niche. Although it can hardly be referred to as "value" device, this is a cooler of the «tower on heat pipes» type.

There are two models of this cooler. The manufacturer decided to divide them by the type of fastening on top of processor coolers. TTC-NK32TZ for Intel LGA775 processors, and TTC-NK34TZ for AMD processors of sockets s754,939,940,AM2.

You have noticed the most important thing, have you? The real market price for this cooler at Moscow shops is merely 17$! Indeed, it's getting better… Titan has not announced the weight of the cooler, but it is light enough and comparable to Zalman CNPS8000 which weighs merely 350 g.

It is quite natural that coolers of this low enough price will not be packaged into huge glossy boxes with a lot of transparent notches - they are shipped in a simple cardboard box with minimum info on the sides.

Among the package bundle items, there is only the cooler itself with a fastening bracket and a tub of proprietary thermal paste Titan TTG-G30010. Let me remind you that it is the very thermal paste which is put as a bundled item to Titan Amanda TEC and it is one of the most efficient thermal interfaces to date. It's a bit pity that the manufacturer has not pre-applied it on the base, so it is rather difficult to spread this sticky paste on the base manually.

There is not much to tell about the design of the cooler itself - it is the most classical sample of the "colossus on heat pipes" concept, but the really high density of fins is worth of a special mention.

This feature allows to increase resistance to the air flow because a 92 mm fan of permanent 2200 rpm rotational speed is used for blowing around. The fan is not at all noiseless, but its advanced design allows producing acceptable non-importunate rumbling which is not a hindrance to work.

Of issue was the system of fastening the fan to the radiator. The thing is not about the method of fastening but that the fastening clips are made of very brittle plastic which crumbles even after a weak impact. It was not only we who noticed this problem, so the high fragility of the fastening clips is typical of all coolers of this series.

The base is made in a very simple way: inside the copper blank there is a notch into which three heat pipes are soldered, and on the top they are pressed by a metal bar into which a small pin is screwed in.

This pin is used to fix fastening brackets of the cooler. The processing quality of the base is good enough, the foot of the cooler is flat albeit not ideally smooth.

The fastening system can't be simpler: for AMD processors it is just a pressing bracket which hooks at the teeth of the frame around the processor socket:

This method of fastening allows directing air flow from the fan to only two of four possible sides, whereas the fan itself can't be moved to the other side at all.

For Intel LGA775 processors, a somehow different pressing bracket and a thrust plate on the reverse side of the board where the bracket presses the cooler.

Since the assembly holes of LGA775 form a perfect square, the flow of hot air can be directed to any of the four sides.

What is nice is that both types of the fastener provide for only manual assembly without using a screwdriver, although you would have to dismantle the motherboard out of the housing to fasten the cooler on top of LGA775.

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	Content:
	Page 1 - Zalman CNPS8000, Titan TTC-NK32(34)TZ Page 2 - SilverStone Nitrogon NT06, ThermalTake Mini Typhoon Page 3 - Tests Top Stories: MoBo: ECS X58B-A (Intel X58) ASUS Rampage II Extreme (Intel X58) MSI DKA790GX and ECS A780GM-A Ultra MSI P7NGM (NVIDIA GeForce 9300) Intel X58 and ASUS P6T Deluxe MSI P45 Neo2 (Intel P45) Foxconn A7GMX-K (AMD 780G) VGA Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 – a new leader in 3D graphics! ECS HYDRA GeForce 9800GTX+. Water-cooled and SLI "all-in-one" Radeon HD 4830 CrossFire - better than Radeon HD 4870! XFX GeForce GTX 260 Black Edition in the SLI mode Leadtek WinFast PX9500 GT DDR2 – better than GeForce 9500GT DDR-3 Palit Radeon HD 4870 Sonic: exclusive, with unusual features Palit HD 4850 Sonic: almost Radeon HD 4870, priced as HD 4850 CPU & Memory: GSkill high-capacity memory modules CPU Intel Core i7-920 (Bloomfield) DDR3 memory: late 2008 CPU AMD Phenom X3 8750 (Toliman) AMD Phenom X4 9850 – a top-end CPU at affordable price CPU Intel Atom 230 (Diamondville) Chaintech Apogee GT DDR3 1600