News ** New products from Zalman

[Cheese]

We've had the scoop on some new products from Zalman and we've been given permission to share a few pictures with you guys

First up is a passive, heat pipe, hdd cooler:



Zalman, like a lot of companies, are branching out into watercooling. Here's a picture of their first Socket A block:



Next up an update of their passive GPU cooler, the new model will be available with a fan as an option to those wanting more cooling power...



The fan will also be available on its own:



The design reminds me on the fan they used to cool the ZM400A-APF 400W PSU, so I suspect it's made by the same company and will be designed for silent running.

Last but not least is a new passive northbridge heatsink:



Nice and blue

Looks like Zalman have been busy then, expect to see reviews of the above on the site in the near future...

Rob.

[Bindibadgi]

BEASTY STUFF!

That vga cooler rocks! LOL! mad.

The harddisk cooler will probably be expensive like every other one on the market and id have to see the inside of the waterblock and more detail before its any good though.

[GT3_GOD]

I'll be getting one of those graphics card coolers for definate

[CrOaKeR]

Sweet looking stuff, fan grill custom, neeeed!

[DaSuperFly]

That hard drive cooler looks amazing!
I wonder if it's that effective considering the majority of the heat is produced from the bottom of the hard drive.
Northbridge looks smashin' too

[Melov]

Damn that gfx card cooler looks huge.

[GreatOldOne]

Sweet muscular Jesus! does that GFX cooler come with a kick stand?! it must way a ton!!

Looks awesome though

[samuelellis]

zalman have a knack of producing some well made & good looking kit

[Hamish]

Originally posted by DaSuperFly
That hard drive cooler looks amazing!
I wonder if it's that effective considering the majority of the heat is produced from the bottom of the hard drive.
Northbridge looks smashin' too

hard drives tend to shift their heat to the sides actually
i think zalman would have done their homework before designing a hard drive cooler tbh

chipset cooler looks odd, they seem to have just made some of the pins higher

[DaSuperFly]

More heat from the centre of the chip mate
Zalman probably have done their research but the bottom still needs cooling. I wonder why there are no heatsink attached to the heatpipes?

[M_D_K]

damn that hard drive thing looks so sweet :P

and look the just bring out a new GFX card cooler just as i buy water cooling stuff typical [only joking] love the gan its got a spanky grill on it and the northbridge heatsink its like a wow some serias cooling from zalman again.

[[twig]clown]

Look at the size of the mofo Gpx cooler!! /me wonders if it will sit on a gpx card in a shuttle, not too likly!
Zalman look like they have done there hwk on the stuff. Very interested to see how there watercooling stuff does, and whether they are going to enter the market as single piece suppliers, or do a kit.
As for the HDD cooler, me likes the look of that, but as Bindibadgi said, will prolly be expensive and thus i wont get 1.

-cLoWn

[couzo]

the hd cooler come with rubber isolators to so it will cut out hd wine and clicking cool. They probably did not add any more to it so It just fills a single 5.25 bay not 2 still looks cool it could replace my silent hard drive rubber band holder being it isolates the noise and also cool the hd to which my currant hd holder does not do!!!!

[RTT]

The graphics card cooler looks rather meaty

[CER3BRO]

Where are the heatsinks on the HD-cooler???

It's completely stupid to have those heatpipes if they are not connected to a heatsink!

That would be like connecting one side of the harddrive to another - not really a great cooler...



I'm sure they have som heatsinks designed tho?

[couzo]

not really as how they are formed the heat will rise they could add heatsinks by all means but they would need to take up 2 bays and in a mass market sense they can't afford to do that as the majority of peeps have cases with 4 drive bays not big server cases. Future versions may come out after Zalman see reviews of it but wait till there are reviews to see how it performs i'd say. Also yes heat won't be gotten rid of amazingly well but atleast there is a bigger place for the heat to spread to

[CER3BRO]

Yeah, but we spend money on expensive heatpipes when they are basicly not even needed? How about just using copper and some heatsinks where the heatpipes are???

In my opinion that would give you a larger surface area - and probably more heat dissipation...

[Cheese]

Originally posted by CER3BRO
Yeah, but we spend money on expensive heatpipes when they are basicly not even needed? How about just using copper and some heatsinks where the heatpipes are???

In my opinion that would give you a larger surface area - and probably more heat dissipation...

We'll have to wait and see how it performs and how much it costs, I think it's a little early to write it off as expensive and underperforming

Rob.

[TwiSteD LoGic]

Now, there are some questions which come to my mind based on what it is which I see. First of all, we all know that is a big fan oh the VGA cooler. I think it will end up being just beyond the specified width of the PCI cards, so slots should not be lost (one due to the backside of the heatpipe. Am I correct? We will find out.

Another concern I have is that HDD heatpipe looks to be a great concept, but it appears to be that installing 1 HDD will end up taking 2 5.25" slots, and for most of us, that is no good. Unless you have a full tower case, and even then lots of room to spare, this is going ot be a tough product to sell.

I also am wondering about the design of the waterblock, it appears that it might just follow the Innovatek deisgn (in regards to the water channel). I would love to see some benchmarks done on this. Also, if they are introducing a waterblock, why not a water HDD cooler such as Innovatek's. I believe Zalman, if they really want to do a good thing, should get together with eheim and see if they can put together a competitivly priced Watercooling kit. (once again, ie Innovatek's kit on highspeedpc.com). I am currently about to pull the trigger on purchasing my watercooling setup, but it seems as though I might now need to delay a bit an see what happens with Zalman. If they can get a kit together, a price war might ensue, which would be quite nice for us consumers. And the result of the price war would be a newer generation of products which would push WC to the next level (or so one can hope).

Thats all I have time for now. =P

[funkychicken9000]

Hi, this is my first post here, just thought i'd say this:

the principle of a heatpipe is for the volatile liquid inside to absorb the heat, evaporate, and condense back at the other end of the tube (effectively removing heat from one end and taking it to the other).

In the case of this HD cooler, there is nowhere for the heat to go. the only place the liquid MAY condense is at the middle of the heatpipe. since there is no cooling/fins here, it'll just heat up the heatpipe more, and eventually all the liquid will stay as a gas. Hence, this HD cooler will not work effectively. Taking heatpipes from both sides to a small Alu HS with a 60mm fan or something above the HD would work far more effectively. Zalman are relying on the "wow factor" to sell this product.

As for the GPU cooler, i think this is finally Zalman admitting that their ZM80A-HP can't cut it on recent cards, so they anodize it grey and slap a fan on it. Zalman are trying to prolong the life of the product by adding a fan, instead of trying to design a more effective heatsink.

The Zalman waterblock... well i'm still undecided. Its copper, so pluspoints there, but i dont like the mounting (although it looks as though the clip has holes for thru-board mounting). Also i hope they ship it with proper barbs unless it's part of a kit.

The zalman fan: looks cool. I'd buy that if it was cheap...

But as for the NB HS, again we see absolutely zero attempt at trying to improve a product in any intelligent way. Theyve stretched the middle fins and anodized it blue. Big woo. when they make it out of copper, then i'll be interested.

So overall, i dont think much of zalman's new gear. They seem to be going the way of Tt and trying to sell products on their appearance rather than innovation. I hope they sort it out.

Just my 2p.