Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Components > Cooling > Zalman CNPS9700 LED Big-Ups CPU Cooling

Zalman CNPS9700 LED Big-Ups CPU Cooling

01:14 - Tuesday 17 October 2006 by Thomas Soderstrom

1. Bigger Really Can Be Better!

2. Results

Bigger Really Can Be Better!

The "bigger is better" concept finds many opponents looking to prove particular circumstances where that assumption doesn’t fit. But when it comes to CPU cooling, bigger really is better as long as the cooler fits the motherboard and case! The reason is obvious: Bigger fans move more air at lower fan speeds, while bigger sinks offer larger surface area, in effect making the fan even more efficient at removing heat.

Often praised for its quality and innovation, Zalman takes the "bigger is better" concept to heart with its CNPS9700 LED, a scaled up version of the popular CNPS9500 LED. A photograph compares the two Zalman designs to an Intel boxed cooler.

The perpendicular design allows the CNPS9700 LED, like its older sibling, to consume a similar amount of board space as the stock cooler, depending on the height of surrounding components. Look for a motherboard compatibility list on Zalman’s product page to appear by its late-October release.

**Cooler Comparison**
Model	CNPS9500 LED	CNPS9700 LED
Dimensions (L-W-H)	3.3 x 4.4 x 4.9" 85 x 112 x 125mm	3.5 x 4.9 x 5.6" 90 x 124 x 142mm
Material	Copper Fins/Base/Heat pipes	Copper Fins/Base/Heat pipes
Weight	1.2 lbs 530g	1.7 lbs 764g
Dissipation Area	3698cm²	5490cm²
Thermal Resistance	0.16-0.12 °C/W	Unspecified
Noise (advertised)	18.0-27.5db	19.5-35db

**System Hardware**
Processor	Intel Core 2 Duo E6400, 2.13GHz, 1066 FSB, 2MB Cache Overclocked at 387 MHz system clock (FSB1548), 1.45 V core voltage
Motherboard	bit AB9-Pro revision 1.00, BIOS version 1.4
RAM	Corsair CMX512-8000UL 2x 512MB, CAS 4-4-4-8
Hard Drive	Western Digital Raptor WD1500ADFD 150GB, 10,000 RPM, 16MB Cache, SATA 150
Networking	Marvell Yukon Gigabit PHY, enabled, offline
Graphics	Sapphire X1900GT 256M PCI-E D-DVI/VIVO GPU: ATI Radeon X1900GT (575MHz) RAM: 256MB GDDR3 (1200MHz)
Power Supply	OCZ ModStream OCZ52012U - 520W modular

**Software & Drivers**
OS	Windows XP Professional 5.1.2600, Service Pack 2
DirectX Version	9.0c (4.09.0000.0904
Platform Driver	Intel INF 8.1.0.1006 (LGA775)
Graphics Driver	ATI Catalyst 6.8

Major reasons to use a larger cooler include overclocking and/or noise reduction. We chose overclocking to gauge temperatures, rather than trying to operate the system at its quietest potential noise level. Since we were already in the middle of testing for an overclocking article, it was easy to grab a few temperatures in BIOS before proceeding with that article.