Zalman CNPS9700LED (LGA 775)

Verdict: A beautiful HSF, but not such a great performer

The Zalman CNPS9700 LED is such a good-looking piece of kit that sealing it inside a case seems like an injustice. Like its predecessor, the CNPS9500LED, the CNPS9700LED uses a set of heatpipes arranged in a figure-of-eight and surrounded by a mane of copper fins.

The CNPS9700LED uses a 110mm fan, rather than a 92mm model as seen on the CNPS9500LED, and its larger size makes it tricky to install. While the mounting system isn't complex, you have to remove the motherboard from the case to give you room to manoeuvre. It's also important to ensure that there's enough tension to secure the heavy cooler to the motherboard. For LGA775 systems, the CNPS9700LED uses a mounting mechanism similar to that of the Reserator 2. It's a single metal bar that pushes down on the base and screws into a two-part plastic frame, which clamps to the motherboard. For Athlon 64 PCs, the bar clips onto the standard plastic retention frame. A Zalman FanMate 2 fan controller is included, plus a vial of thermal paste and an applicator brush.

In our AMD test system, an overclocked and overvolted Athlon 64 FX-55, with the CNPS9700LED at maximum fan speed, the CPU was 14ûC cooler than it was with the reference cooler, and 8ûC cooler with the fan at minimum speed. This compares well to the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro, which cooled the CPU to 18ûC below the reference HSF.

At full speed, however, the CNPS9700LED is noisier. In our Intel system, with the fan at full speed, the overclocked and overvolted 3.96GHz Pentium 4e was 12ûC cooler than it was with the reference cooler. This is good, but still some way off the 19ûC achieved by the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro.

CONCLUSION

The CNPS9700LED isn't much more effective than the CNPS9500LED. The bigger fan doesn't seem to be any more efficient at transferring heat from the CPU, even at top speed, when it's noisy too. Given its price, the CNPS9700LED is hard to recommend over an Arctic Cooling HSF.

ffective than the CNPS9500LED. The bigger fan doesn't seem to be any more efficient at transferring heat from the CPU, even at top speed