Zalman CNPS9900 LED: The End of the Nines

Edit:
Postcript added on Jan 9, 2009 (page 8)
-Lawrence Lee

Hmm. For a design that is more about looks than cooling performance or efficiency they made it look rather ugly with the plastic cover.

Hi Mike,

Are the heatpipes soldered to the base? In some of the photos, it looks like there is a lot of daylight between the tubes and the base -- and in one, it looks like there is solder in there?

Are the fins 0.2mm, or 0.24mm? Either way, they are pretty darn thin -- do they bend easily?

Mike, great article! In the beginning there was a notice of the ZALMAN CNPS-7000... I would have loved it if you made a quick summary about how new ZALMAN designs are better/worse than it and if the 7000 can be still considered unique today.

I have one and I've not had the need to replace the fan, because at 5V it's very silent and my Core 2 Duo E6300 is idling at 38C

I'd be interested to see the cooling performance with a 120mm Slipstream or Nexus fit into the space for that noisy Zalman fan. I wonder if the design is the culprit or if the fan is to blame for the poor cooling/noise ratio.

Well, heatsinks don't wear except for the fan, so if it was good for your gear 3 years ago, it's still the same. The 7000 series were good against similar size/price competition in their day, but not against today's best, which are far bigger and more expensive. The idea of pressing thin plates together and spreading one side to become fins, and polishing one side of edges to become the base was unique and efficient. imo, the 9500 and others in the 9000 series look striking but are fundamentally limited compared to the more straightforward designs that have fewer bends in the heatpipes -- and often both more heatpipes and greater fin surface area.

I've never understood what's so cool in a big heat sink like the Scythe Ninja. Notice "cool" and not "good-for-an-undervolted-fan-making-it-silent-and-effective-with-an-undervolted-CPU". They just take too much space to work with I say (had my own experience with an ULTRA CPU cooler which name I can't recall). On the other hand I'm the HTPC fanatic and that's why I prefer everything to be nice n slim. I'm concerned also about the cantilever effect; will a big object that's supported only on one end produce more stress on a vertically installed motherboard than a short object that's equally heavy as the big object? Not the kind of physics guy, please shed some light to this. Thanks!

Looks like it's time for the old design to be taken out the back and shot.

Maybe it would have done better if they:

a) Licensed better bearings like CM did with S-FDB.
b) made it two heatpipes on both ends.

As it is it fail on sound, heat and looks.

Hmmm....I'd like to see a 38mm Panaflo modded into the middle of that thing.

I don't think a 38mm fan would fit in between the fin arrays. I would seriously like to see a Slipstream or Nexus fan in there though. I'm looking for a new heatsinks, but I hate how this one looks. Zalman HSFs were very cool and some of the best back when the CNPS 7000/7700 came out. Now they're just under-performing, over-priced hunks of copper that look absolutely wacky.

I saw the big gap between the fins and i was wondering the same thing -- how can one mod an existing quiet fan to fit in there?

The lipstream sounds like a good idea. Or you could take the fan out completely and just run it passive with a good performing exhaust fan.

Nice review. I can't remember where else I saw this reveiwed, but in the one I read, they taped shut the gaps in the plastic shroud, and saw better cooling performance. Did you consider that during your testing? I know it's best to review a product as-is, but just out of curiosity for some of the modders out there.

Hi guys, we just added a postcript to this article. We tested it without the shroud altogether. See page 8:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article901-page8.html

Wow, it made a big difference! I wonder why zalman even bothered to put the shroud on. Worse performance and not as nice to look at.

Larry's comment about the space between the 2 banks of fins being excessive is right on target. No question if the space was reduced by... as much as a cm, it looks like, then cooling performance would be better. Turbulence noise might increase a bit, but not at low rpm/voltage.

Did Zalman remove the shroud from the product?

The shroud is not in the product pictures @ Zalman.co.kr. Don't know if it has ever been in them though.

Well Zalman are now claiming the shroud is only there to protect the cooler during transport and should be removed prior to use. I wonder if that was their intention all along, or if they simply realised it was rubbish after reading reviews like this one?

In the product manual (on page 4) it says to remove the plastic band (the shroud) before installation.
The plastic band seems to be quite excessive to me for a piece of plastic thats just for transport.
I mean why make venting holes/air slot in a transport bracket?
Why use a screw to hold it together instead of some cheap clip/snap method and make the plastic band in 2 pieces instead of 1? That would also make it alot easier to remove.
Why is the screw "hidden" underneath the cooler if the user is supposed to unscrew it and remove the plastic? That doen't make sense to me at all.

I think they saw the review a quickly changed the description of the plastic band.

@ MikeC : In the product manual the came with your sample of the 9900 is the platic band mentioned as a transport bracket or not.
If they didn't realise it was rubbish before SPCR reviewed it I suspect the plastic band may be descripted otherwise in you "earlier" version of the product manual.

How much do you wanna bet the original design had no shroud?

That is until the lawyers stepped in and made them add a finger guard.

Either that or zalmans engineers get their degrees from cereal boxes.

Nearly every heatsink, inclduing stock ones have exposed fans..