Oh dear. I was sort of looking forward to seeing Zalman reviewed again, having started silencing with their coolers, but how can a company that was once so right now keep going so wrong. I'm sure there might still be merit to the flower design, but by goodness why can't they fix what has been wrong for nearly a decade.

I don't understand how it is possible for all these companies to screw up something like heatsink concavity. How can they let this slip by, when they could easily test it themselves and make changes for a better connection? I see it in virtually every SPCR review, sans a few of the higher end models. Surely it couldn't be that expensive or time consuming to do this?

In this case, it is not just concavity, but a poor mounting system that does not apply even pressure, with parts that bend, screws that strip, screw positioning that hinders proper mounting (with a poorly executed specialized tool -- that allen wrench), and fans that are basically noisy.

As suggested in the review, we cannot know that all samples exhibit this type of departure from base flatness, and if the base was flat, performance could be markedly improved. But even with a flat base, the other flaws would exist, and they definitely have a bearing on performance as well.

Extended quality checking definitly hurts the manufacturer's margins. And in this world you buy your parts from the supplier with the cheapest offering, which is in most cases not the one with the highest build quality.

Though the point about quality control - and to an extent consumer habits - is valid, I would more readily blame lazy or inept design, as apparent from the review's appraisal. It's like there was no effort to improve anything at all - brute forcing at its finest. I'm sure similar, corner-cutting approaches can be found elsewhere, especially in the economy/budget tier.

Ouch...
Sad...
My first ever mod towards quiet computers was to put a VNF-100 (Zalman) on a 6800GS... It was a great little cooler. Too bad they don't seem to be good at making decent CPU coolers...

Interesting - I was considering this, as I have a CNPS 9900 MAX and thought it'd be a slight upgrade. My heatsink doesn't have very good contact with the CPU either but is acceptable.

At this point, I am thinking of just going with one of those closed loop coolers like Thermaltake's new Water 2.0 Extreme - just hope the pump is not too loud / buzzy.

Why watercooling? Good air coolers are more efficient and make less noise.

Severe space restriction in my computer case + my particular mini ITX motherboard = odd heatsink orientations, restricted width, restricted allowed fan placements, etc. The only true step up is water cooling for my set up. The Zalman heatsink is installed sidways even, which isn't hindering its performance much at the moment... Just not very good performance anyway for my Ivy CPU.

Fair enough.

On traditional itx boards you have very limited cooling options, if you need to use the PCI-E slot. It used to boil down to Samuel17 and some thermalright cooler (which is EOL) + slim 120mm fan.

Regarding closed waterloops: Afaik it's a kind of a lottery if you receive a noisy pump or not. Most systems need to have the pump undervolted to be reasonable quiet. Corsairs products seem to be used quite often.