Zalman CNPS 9900 LED review - Introduction

One of the top vendors out on the market specializing in quiet yet optimal cooling solutions has to be Zalman. And though they expanded their market quite extensively with other products over the past two year, their core business and reputation will always be based on diverse and unique coolers for CPUs and GPUs. High performance coolers with low noise, that's Zalman.

If you have such a reputation to uphold, then each and every time you bring something new to the market, you have to make sure it's of the same if not better quality compared to the last generation product. Quite a challenge when your think about that for a minute. Heck there's only so much you can do with a cooler design I guess.

Recently Zalman introduced the CNPS 9900 LED fan. An all new heatpipe based cooler with not one, but two heatsinks. The fun part is, it just looks really extraordinary as in-between the two heatsinks, an actual LED lit 120mm ventilator is located. Yes the cooler has been split down the middle, moved away from each other to make room for that fan integrated into the center of the heatsink.

As the past has taught us, typically when a manufacturer goes for aesthetics, they forfeit a little on other things like performance. That makes us wonder, could that be the case for the CNPS 9900 LED.

Some bold claims from Zalman:

• Does not generate noise or vibration in Silent Mode.
• 100% copper heatsink with aerodynamically optimized “tunnel” design for maximum cooling efficiency.
• Patented heatpipe design for cooling performance of up to 6 heatpipes with the use of just 3.
• Ultra-thin 0.2mm fins for minimized weight and significantly reduced airflow resistance.
• Compatible with all Intel Socket 1366/775 and all AMD Socket AM2+/AM2/754/939/940 based Single, Dual, and Quad Core CPUs.
• Ultra quiet 120mm PWM LED fan for automatic fan speed control according to the CPU's temperature.

Well, that all sounds good for sure. let's have a look at the product and check out its performance and noise levels.

Next page please.