Zalman and Asetek - new heatsinks

Any idea how these perform to an XP-120 with a medium speed fan (70cfm~)? The Zalman 9500 looks awesome imho

 

Need to get an UUUUUBER cooler test goin, not just loads of crap ones and a couple of well know favourites, the very best air, very best off the shelf water kits (low end) see whats best all round.

Il prob still get a xp-120 for me new rig tbh, impressed by me si-97 so cant go wrong.

Edit/ just noticed that

Well your average cooler will nomally run at bout 30-40ish idle, 28oC is hardly mind blowing. Think you should ask them when those stats come from

 

probably from the marketing department

 

They can make claims like that until a review is done right. The zalman shouldve been lapped to show the difference in temps. It couldve gone down 5 degrees or it couldve stayed the same. Either way we'll just be guessing until another review comes out to show its real ability.

 

Personally, I don't think that any cooler should be lapped by reviewers. We've tested the other heatsinks in their out of the box form and if the company fail to lap the heatsink before shipping it is very hard to recommend such a cooler. If it was lapped and it's curved bottom didn't get picked up by quality control then that highlights the poor quality control on the product. How can we say that you're getting a quality product when the shipped product is evidently nowhere near 'quality'.

Basically you are saying that everyone who buys a cooler should have to spend hours lapping it to ensure that it is flat, rather than expecting the manufacturer will sell you a cooler that is 'ready for use'?

There was a debate similar to this over on procooling a long while back, and I'm inclined to agree with them in this case. A cooler should be shipped ready to use.

 

When manufacturers ship us products for review they sometimes state that that are pre-production review samples, in those cases we would expect there to possibly be minor issues with the product such as finish, packaging or even a fan that will be different from the one on the retail units. However, these were retail samples, as sold to Joe Public for instant installation and use.

Jackpotcoast, can you honestly tell me that more than a tiny fraction of the customers likely to buy this product will even know what lapping is? In fact, if you do lap the Zalman HS, I would suspect that they could easily claim that you have invalidated the warranty by doing so. As a reputable online publication we could hardly recommend that before you use your new Zalman heatsink you should go and lap it invalidating the warranty. What we have done is highlight the problem directly with Zalman through a review that they will read therefore injecting a production line solution rather than a customer workaround.

 

Its funny how reviewers can find obvious issues and faults with 5 minutes of using things, but the manurfacturers dont come across them

Surely theyd save a lot of money and hassle by fixing things before production, I bet the first batch still have bad contact with the cpu

 

got the Asetek VapoChill Micro - Ultra Low Noise to go with an upgrade to rig shown in spec.
Am extremely disappointed in it if I had have kept the packaging i'd have returned it.

Issues:-
1) Fan mounting is laughable - it's like the acrylic stiffners the use to pack new shirts (to hold collar)
2) Not all of CPU is covered - when dismounted saw corners of cpu not covered with thermal paste.
3) Mounting as stated in review is hit/miss as to whether you have equal tension across CPU.
4) Radiator is flimsy & easy to damage.

Pros:-
Easy to remove & replace.

 

I'm sorry you're disappointed Supershanks, but the #1 rule is NEVER toss the packaging unless you're sure you won't need it. I tend to keep all my retail boxes anyway - helps if I ever want to sell any of it second hand

 

It must be the 1st time i've done it in about 10years +
Don't really know what got into me.

 

Just a follow up on the poor Zalman lapping issue found on the revue sample. Had understood from uk sites that release date was expected as yesterday, talking to someone at Scan delivery isn't expected now 4 2 weeks.
Bad Production batch ???? I wonder.

Oh well orderedXp-90C This Week Only same price as XP-90

 

ive been having some hsf woes. the stock cooler with my AMD2800+ was doing about 50 degrees under normal use, so i decided i wanted a new heatsink. i read one of your articles from a while back (not on the new site) and decided to buy a vantec Aeroflow 2. I installed it and it lowered the temp to about 35 degrees, but the fan was ludicrously noisy compared to the stock fan, and with it being an unusual size (70mm) i couldnt replace it with a quieter one. i re-attached the original heatsink only to find that the temperatures had gone up to about 65 degrees! I couldnt live with the noise the aerfolow made and so have stuck with the original hsf since. do you think i am doing any damage to my processor? perhaps i could let it burn itself out so i have an excuse to buy a new one

oh yeah, my msi fx5900xt ultra (nbox 256mb version) runs at just under 100 degrees during a doom 3 session, even with its massive copper sinks and fans on both sides... should I be worried?

 

I must be doing something wrong since I don't seem to be getting anything close to the performance quoted in the reviews. I've just built a system using a P4 840 EE inside a Lian-Li V2000 case. I'd expected the dual core to run hot, but I'd also expected more out of the Zalman. Here are my impressions.

The installation was much less painful than I'd feared. It would have been helpful to have found some note in the documentation about the direction of airflow as this would have saved me having to install it twice (once while already in the case). The reinstallation gave me a chance to look at the Arctic Silver distribution, which was very even compared to the one photographed in the review, so I don't see a problem there.

But I am getting idle temperatures around 54degC with case temperatures around 35degC and ambiant at perhaps 20degC. I haven't had a chance to test under load as I've spent the day exploring the bios. But these CPU temperature seems extremely high to me. The fins, on the other hand, are not even really warm to the touch.

The one thing I may be able to attribute this to is a bit of play in the clamping mechanism. The Zalman can slide around a bit. But it still seems to be making good contact, so I don't know what to think.

Ideas?

Mifune

 

The fan mounting of the Asetek is just plain ridiculous! I won that cooler from a case modding contest last year and sold it immediately after opening the package Now going for 9500-AM2-version..

 

I'm afraid you've dug up a dead person here , any opinions are now incredibly belated.

<A88>

 

Hehe Yep there's only ghosts left in the machine, but have 2 agree with your

luck

 

That Zalman fan is truly amazing. 44% overclock and my CPU is doing fine.