Zalman CNPS5X SZ CPU Cooler Review

[nextpage title=”Introduction”]

This time we are benchmarking the Zalman CNPS5X SZ, a mainstream CPU cooler with a vertical heatsink, three U-shaped heatpipes and a 92 mm fan. Check it out!

Pay attention because Zalman offers two coolers with similar names, the CNPS5X and the CNPS5X SZ. The main difference is that the "SZ" model is sold only in the US and its fan uses a hydraulic bearing, while the other model is distributed in other countries and uses an "enter bearing".

The CNPS5X SZ is a tower cooler that resembles the Zalman CNPS8000A CPU cooler, which we already reviewed. Their heatsinks and fans are almost the same, but the CNPS8000A is a horizontal, low-profile cooler, while on the CNPS5X SZ the heatsink is vertical.

The CNPS5X SZ box is small, as you can see in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Package

In Figure 2, you can see what comes inside the box: the cooler itself, a motherboard frame for Intel CPUs, thermal compound, and a manual.

Figure 2: Accessories

In Figure 3, you can see the CNPS5X SZ.

Figure 3: The Zalman CNPS5X SZ CPU cooler

In the next pages, you will see this cooler in detail.

[nextpage title=”The Zalman CNPS5X SZ”]

In Figure 4, you see the front of the cooler. The black 92-mm fan has a plastic frame on the upper and lower parts. The metallic clip for fastening the cooler is longer than the cooler, and this may cause trouble during installation.

Figure 4: Front view

In Figure 5, you can see the side of the cooler.

Figure 5: Front view

In Figure 6, you check the cooler rear side. Here you notice the three "near U-shaped" heatpipes.

Figure 6: Rear view

In Figure 7, you can see the cooler from the top. The top fins are smaller than the middle ones.

Figure 7: Top view

[nextpage title=”The Zalman CNPS5X SZ (Cont’d)”]In Figure 8, you see the base of the cooler. It is made of copper, smooth but with no mirrored aspect.

Figure 8: Base

In Figure 9, you see the cooler without the fan.

Figure 9: Heatsink

The 92-mm fan has a four-pin connector, which means it supports PWM speed control.

Figure 10: Fan

[nextpage title=”Installation”]Installing the CNPS5X SZ on AMD CPUs is a breeze: you just need to hook it to the existing motherboard frame, fastening the screws to hold it in place. For Intel socket LGA775 or 1155/1156 CPUs, however, you will need to install the plastic frame shown in Figure 11 on your motherboard, using the existing holes. In Figure 12, we show this frame installed on our motherboard.

Figure 11: Intel frame

Figure 12: Frame installed

In Figure 13, you can see our first try to install the CNPS5X SZ in our system; the position is the one shown in the product manual. However, when we turned the computer on, it didn’t even finish loading the operating system and shut down. We’ve removed the cooler and noted that it was barely touching the CPU, because one of the screws was blocked by the chipset heatsink. So we had to re-install the cooler, this time using it on a different orientation.

Figure 13: Installed according to the manual

In Figure 13, you see the position we managed to install the CNPS5X SZ. Note the scratch at the chipset heatsink, made the first time we installed the cooler (Figure 12).

Figure 13: Correctly installed

[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]

We tested the cooler with a Core i7-860 CPU (quad-core, 2.8 GHz), which is a socket LGA1156 processor with a 95 W TDP (Thermal Design Power). In order to get higher thermal dissipation, we overclocked it to 3.3 GHz (150 MHz base clock and 22x multiplier), keeping the standard core voltage (Vcore), which was the maximum stable overclock we could make with the stock cooler. Keep in mind that we could have raised the CPU clock more, but to include the stock cooler in our comparison, we needed to use this moderate overclock.

We measured noise and temperature with the CPU idle and under full load. In ord
er to get 100% CPU usage in all threads, we ran Prime 95 25.11 (in this version, the software uses all available threads) with the "In-place Large FFTs" option.

We compared the tested cooler to the Intel stock cooler with a copper base (included with the CPU), as well as with other coolers. Note that in the past, we tested coolers with a socket LGA775 CPU, and we retested some "old" coolers with this new methodology. This means you can find different values in older reviews than the values you will read in the next page. Every cooler was tested with the thermal compound that accompanies it.

Room temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermometer. The core temperature was read with the SpeedFan program (available from the CPU thermal sensors), using an arithmetic average of the core temperature readings. During the tests, the left panel of the case was open.

The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed 4" (10 cm) from the fan. We turned off the case and video board cooler fans so they wouldn’t interfere with the results. This measurement is only for comparison purposes because a precise SPL measurement needs to be made inside an acoustically insulated room with no other noise sources, which is not the case here.

Hardware Configuration

• Processor: Core i7-860
• Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD6
• Memory: 2 GB Markvision (DDR3-1333/PC3-10700 with 9-9-9-22 timings), configured at 1,200 MHz
• Hard disk: Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
• Video card: Zotac GeForce GTS 250
• Video resolution: 1680×1050
• Video monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW Plus
• Power supply: Seventeam ST-550P-AM
• Case: 3RSystem L-1100 T.REX Cool

Operating System Configuration

• Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

Software Used

• Prime95
• SpeedFan

Error Margin

We adopted a 2 °C error margin, meaning temperature differences below 2 °C are considered irrelevant.

[nextpage title=”Our Tests”]

The table below presents the results of our measurements. We repeated the same test on all coolers listed below. Each measurement was taken with the CPU at idle and at full load. In the models with a fan supporting PWM, the motherboard controlled the fan speed according to core load and temperature. On coolers with an integrated fan controller, the fan was set at the minimum speed on the idle test and at full speed on the full load test.

		Idle Processor			Processor at Full Load
Cooler	Room Temp.	Noise	Speed	Core Temp.	Noise	Speed	Core Temp.
Intel stock (socket LGA1156)	14 °C	44 dBA	1700 rpm	46 °C	54 dBA	2500 rpm	90 °C
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 G1	14 °C	47 dBA	2050 rpm	33 °C	56 dBA	2900 rpm	62 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme	14 °C	45 dBA	1400 rpm	27 °C	53 dBA	1950 rpm	51 °C
Thermaltake Silent 1156	14 °C	44 dBA	1200 rpm	38 °C	49 dBA	1750 rpm	69 °C
Noctua NH-D14	14 °C	49 dBA	1250 rpm	27 °C	49 dBA	1250 rpm	53 °C
Zalman CNPS10X Performa	14 °C	46 dBA	1500 rpm	28 °C	52 dBA	1950 rpm	54 °C
Prolimatech Megahalems	14 °C	40 dBA	750 rpm	27 °C	60 dBA	2550 rpm	50 °C
Thermaltake Frio	14 °C	46 dBA	1450 rpm	27 °C	60 dBA	2500 rpm	50 °C
Prolimatech Samuel 17	14 °C	40 dBA	750 rpm	40 °C	60 dBA	2550 rpm	63 °C
Zalman CNPS8000A	18 °C	43 dBA	1400 rpm	39 °C	54 dBA	2500 rpm	70 °C
Spire TherMax Eclipse II	14 °C	55 dBA	2200 rpm	28 °C	55 dBA	2200 rpm	53 °C
Scythe Ninja3	17 °C	39 dBA	700 rpm	32 °C	55 dBA	1800 rpm	57 °C
Corsair A50	18 °C	52 dBA	1900 rpm	33 °C	52 dBA	1900 rpm	60 °C
Thermaltake Jing	18 °C	44 dBA	850 rpm	34 °C	49 dBA	1300 rpm	60 °C
GlacialTech Alaska	18 °C	43 dBA	1150 rpm	36 °C	51 dBA	1600 rpm	60 °C
Deepcool Gamer Storm	18 °C	43 dBA	1100 rpm	35 °C	48 dBA	1600 rpm	62 °C
Corsair A70	26 °C	56 dBA	1900 rpm	40 °C	56 dBA	1900 rpm	65 °C
Deepcool Ice Blade Pro	23 °C	45 dBA	1200 rpm	38 °C	52 dBA	1500 rpm	64 °C
AC Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2	23 °C	47 dBA	1750 rpm	44 °C	51 dBA	2100 rpm	77 °C
Corsair H70	27 °C	60 dBA	1900 rpm	37 °C	60 dBA	1900 rpm	61 °C
Zalman CNPS9900 Max	27 °C	55 dBA	1600 rpm	38 °C	58 dBA	1750 rpm	63 °C
Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP	25 °C	45 dBA	1700 rpm	51 °C	49 dBA	1950 rpm	91 °C
CoolIT Vantage	26 °C	60 dBA	2500 rpm	37 °C	60 dBA	2500 rpm	62 °C
Deepcool Ice Matrix 600	25 °C	46 dBA	1100 rpm	41 °C	53 dBA	1300 rpm	69 °C
Titan Hati	26 °C	46 dBA	1500 rpm	40 °C	57 dBA	2450 rpm	68 °C
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13	27 °C	49 dBA	1950 rpm	41 °C	53 dBA	2300 rpm	70 °C
Noctua NH-C14	26 °C	52 dBA	1300 rpm	37 °C	52 dBA	1300 rpm	61 °C
Intel XTS100H	26 °C	49 dBA	1200 rpm	42 °C	64 dBA	2600 rpm	68 °C
Zalman CNPS5X SZ	23 °C	52 dBA	2250 rpm	38 °C	57 dBA	2950 rpm	69 °C

In the graph below, at full load you can see how many degrees Celsius hotter the CPU core is than the air outside the case. The lower this difference, the better is the performance of the cooler.

 

[nextpage title=”Main Specifications”]

The main features of the Zalman CNPS5X SZ CPU cooler include:

• Application: Socket LGA775, 1155, 1156, AM2, AM2+, AM3, 939, and 754 processors
• Fins: Aluminum
• Base: Copper
• Heat-pipes: Three 6-mm copper heatpipes
• Fan: 92 mm
• Nominal fan speed: 2,800 rpm
• Fan air flow: NA
• Maximum power consumption: NA
• Nominal noise level: 32 dBA
• Weight: 11.3 oz (320 g)
• More information: https://www.zalman.com
• Average price in the US*: USD 30.00

* Reseached at Newegg.com on the day we published this review.[nextpage title=”Conclusions”]

At first, we weren’t expecting the Zalman CNPS5X SZ to provide good performance. First, because it is smaller and lighter than most good-performance coolers we are used to test. Second, because its heatsink is very similar to the one we saw with the CNPS8000A, which wasn’t a good performer. However, the CNPS5X SZ surprised us, performing nearly as well as some big, heavy coolers.

It is also relatively quiet and inexpensive. Its main problem is the compatibility issue: the piece that holds the screws is too long and can be blocked by the chipset heatsink or other motherboard parts, and you can even damage your motherboard if you aren’t aware of this problem.

In any case, the Zalman CNPS5X SZ is a good-performance cooler, with a great cost/benefit ratio, so it receives the Hardware Secrets Bronze Award.