The heatpipes lie in the grooves of the copper base plate and are soldered to it:

The base surface is impeccably even and polished to mirror-shine:

Just like Zalman CNPS8700 NT, the CNPS9700 NT model also uses a different fan. It is a 7-blade 110 x 25 mm fan supporting PWM rotation speed control. It rotates at the same 1250~2800 RPM and generates 17.5~35 dBA of noise.

Two fan ball bearings should keep it running (rotating) for 50,000 hours.

Zalman CNPS9700 NT installs exactly the same way as the predecessor. The cooler is pressed against the CPU hard enough to ensure secure contact with the heat-spreader. This is what the nickel-plated Zalman CNPS9700 NT looks like inside the system case:

The fan highlighting has become green now, just like by Zalman CNPS8700 NT:

This Nvidia shielded beauty is offered for $65.