Design

The Zalman CNPS8700 LED looks like the good old Zalman CNPS7000 and 7700 that used to be considered fantastically efficient coolers. The specific bowl-like shape of the heatsink leaves no room for a mistake.

But as soon as you take a look at it from a side or from below, you realize it is quite different from the copper chunk weighing near 1kg.

The cooler is based on two copper heat pipes, 6mm in diameter. They go out of a copper base covered with an aluminum plate from above and carry a large number of copper ribs, only 0.2mm thick.

The pipes go around in two tiers, distributing heat evenly in the ribbing, and end in the base. The cooler is rather low by today’s standards. Its height is a mere 67mm and it weighs only 475g. Each rib sports a stamped name of the manufacturer.

To make the whole design more rigid, the heat pipes are soldered to one another in the place of contact:

The pipes are soldered to each other in the base as well: