X-bit labs

High-End CPU Coolers Roundup: The Battle for Silence and Efficiency

Category: Coolers

by Anton Shilov , Alexey Stepin

[ 02/24/2005 | 05:58 PM ]

Nowadays computer users pay attention not only to performance of their PCs, but also to such characteristic as external design, high stability and silence. Given that modern computers produce incredible amount of heat, coolers play one of the biggest roles in making the PCs comfortable to work on. Today X-bit labs attempts to find out the best among the best from CoolerMaster, Gigabyte and Zalman.

Table of contents:

• Zalman CNPS7700-Cu: The Grandeur
  
• First Glance
  
• Specifications
  
• Design
  
• Retention Mechanism, Installation Procedure
  
• Zalman CNPS7000-Cu with ZM-CS1 Retention Mechanism: Former Champ Gets New Duty
  
• First Glance
  
• Specifications
  
• Installation Procedure
  
• CoolerMaster Hyper 48 KHC-L91: Tranquil Perfection
  
• First Glance
  
• Specifications
  
• Design
  
• Retention Mechanism, Installation Procedure
  
• Gigabyte 3D Rocket PCU22-SE: Skyrocketing Cooling
  
• First Glance
  
• Specifications
  
• Design
  
• Retention Mechanism, Installation Procedure
  
• Testbed and Methods
  
• Noise Level
  
• Performance Overall
  
• Performance Indepth
  
• CoolerMaster Hyper 48
  
• Zalman CNPS7700 max
  
• Zalman CNPS7700 min
  
• Zalman CNPS7000 max
  
• Zalman CNPS7000 min
  
• Gigabyte PCU22-SE max
  
• Gigabyte PCU22-SE min
  
• Gigabyte PCU22-SE max (cover off)
  
• Gigabyte PCU22-SE min (cover off)
  
• Conclusion
  

Despite of the fact that the latest processors require tremendously efficient cooling solutions to work stably, the market of coolers is probably stagnating these days: there are leaders and there are those who are trying to catch up with the top makers. None of the cooler manufacturers have invented any principally new heatsinks in the last two or three years, so, all we have now is to witness how companies like Zalman or CoolerMaster are polishing off their products and technologies introduced years ago.

Nevertheless, for actual users the stagnation means almost nothing: we still need to find coolers for our particular needs and requirements, such as efficiency, low noise levels or any other.

These days the industry is transitioning not only to new types of interconnections, e.g., PCI Express, and memory, for instance, DDR2, but also to new types of processor sockets – particularly to Socket 775 and Socket 939 for Intel Corp.’s and AMD’s platforms respectively. So, in case you are upgrading today, you need to find yourself a proper cooler, as your previous one can probably hardly be used for contemporary microprocessors.

We picked up three coolers among the finest available today from CoolerMaster, Gigabyte, Zalman and a previous-generation product from Zalman – CNPS7000-Cu with the company’s ZM-CS1 retention mechanism that allows installing this Socket 478/Socket 754 cooler onto new Socket 775 mainboards.