Just to let you know that the Zalman CNPS7000(Al)Cu works well on a socket 940 Opteron system. Zalman doesn't officially support the CNPS7000 on Opterons, only on Athlon 64's.
The mounting mechanism for Opteron and Athlon64 is physically the same, so I took the risk and replaced the stock Opteron coolers (build by Thermaltake) by the CNPS7000. Apart from being significantly more silent, they also cool better. I saw a difference of about 3°C going from the Thermaltake cooler to the Zalman cooler. I used the AlCu version in order not to take any risk with the weight of the heatsink.
I haven't tried yet to run the Zalman coolers at a lower fan speed because at this moment the power supply is by far the noisiest component. I currently use a Fortron EPS12V power supply and it is very loud. I planned on using an Antec EPS12V 550W power supply but couldn't get it in time. Because of the noise, I still ordered the Antec power supply, I hope it will arrive soon.
Zalman CNPS7000ALCu works well on Opteron
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about 43°C idle, up to 48°C under load (Sandra burnin). This is on a relatively hot day (at least for Belgium). I have a 244 system (1.8 GHz).
Compared to other systems I have:
AXP 1700+: +- 60°C (beware: this is with a Papst fan running at 1500RPM)
AXP 2700+: runs at 50°C and higher.
Dual PIII 500: between 45 and 55°C.
It is probably the coolest running processor I have. The heat sink feels barely warm. The Thermaltake heatsink delivered with the CPU however feeled somewhat hot. The large surface of the Zalman probably keeps the heat sink very cool.
Note that I have a Tyan S2880 motherboard, which is rumoured to be the only motherboard currently having correct temperature readouts.
If it wasn't for the noise of the power supply, I'd probably run the cpu fans at 1500rpm.
Low clock speed A64's or Opterons may be what the silence freaks need.
Did you see that there are 1U Opteron servers running their CPU fanless, just with a duct from a case fan?
Compared to other systems I have:
AXP 1700+: +- 60°C (beware: this is with a Papst fan running at 1500RPM)
AXP 2700+: runs at 50°C and higher.
Dual PIII 500: between 45 and 55°C.
It is probably the coolest running processor I have. The heat sink feels barely warm. The Thermaltake heatsink delivered with the CPU however feeled somewhat hot. The large surface of the Zalman probably keeps the heat sink very cool.
Note that I have a Tyan S2880 motherboard, which is rumoured to be the only motherboard currently having correct temperature readouts.
If it wasn't for the noise of the power supply, I'd probably run the cpu fans at 1500rpm.
Low clock speed A64's or Opterons may be what the silence freaks need.
Did you see that there are 1U Opteron servers running their CPU fanless, just with a duct from a case fan?