Design and Functionality

As we have already mentioned in the introduction to our today’s article, Zalman CNPS10X Extreme is built following classical tower design. When you get the first feel of it, you can’t help noticing that it is pretty heavy: 920 g is considered quite a lot even according to today’s standards. Let’s take a closer look at this new solution:

Fully nickel-plated heatsink consists of 56 aluminum plates, each 0.45 mm thick that are spaced at 1.7 mm apart from one another. The heatsink array sits on five copper heatpipes with 6 mm diameter. According to the official specifications, the effective heatsink surface measures 8,544 cm². The heatsink plates array is topped with a plastic cover that together with a plastic fan frame and blades adds some elaborate looks to the cooler:

The sides of the heatsink are not covered with anything. Zalman engineers seem to believe that open heatsink sides improve heat dissipation from the plates and lower the heatsink temperature rather than help concentrate the airflow inside the heatsink:

By looking at the top of the cooler, you get a glimpse of a unique regulator that we are going to dwell on a little later. And the bottom view of the cooler will show you your own amazed face reflected in impeccably polished mirror-shining base surface:

You can remove the top plastic cover by undoing a couple of retention screws:

You can also remove the fan from the frame and see that the heatsink is actually not as simple as you might have thought before:

The heatsink plates are of variable height on the side of the entering airflow, which lowers the airflow resistance and reduces the dependence of the cooler efficiency on the fan rotation speed:

The heatpipes go through the heatsink in a way similar to heatpipes of the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme cooler (by the way, they use the same work in their model names, too):

As you know, non-linear positioning of the heatpipes inside the heatsink array helps distribute the airflow over the plates more evenly, although no one has ever tried to find out how greatly it actually improves the cooling efficiency. Here I would also like to add that heatpipes are soldered to the cooler base.