Conclusion

According to the results of our today’s test session, Zalman VF2000 LED didn’t prove to be an ultimate universal solution for all possible applications, but it did demonstrate excellent potential and has every chance to become a great alternative to reference coolers of powerful graphics accelerators. However, to ensure that it becomes a real success they have to include an efficient heatsink for the VRM components as well. Otherwise, while the GPU is cooled perfectly, the voltage regulator components quickly get overheated. At least, this was the case for a Radeon HD 4870 graphics card. Graphics cards with lower levels of heat dissipation and power consumption may not have such a big problem with it, but anyway a 55-dollar cooling solution should be equipped with everything necessary for efficient work.

In terms of CPU cooling, it is important to understand that Zalman VF2000 LED doesn’t fight for the super-cooler title and is primarily targeted for HTPC systems. Small size and weight of this solution together with the results of our today’s test session are great proof to that. Nevertheless, Zalman VF2000 LED in quiet mode can cope perfectly fine with cooling a slightly overclocked quad-core processor under pretty serious load that barely ever occurs in HTPC systems. As for the drawbacks, we have to point out that the cooler has limited compatibility with certain mainboards and doesn’t support LGA1366 platform. The first issue cannot be fixed without modifying the cooler heatsink pretty seriously, but the second one can easily be eliminated. An LGA1366 retention kit and a heatsink for the graphics card VRM components may make Zalman VF2000 LED even more attractive for potential customers.