by Sergey Lepilov
09/12/2009 | 07:19 AM
There is a well-known aphorism “jack of all trades”, describing a person with multiple skills, but often ironically suggesting that this person has no expert proficiency. However, it shouldn’t be always referred to with irony. Sometimes, a person can handle several different tasks at the same time quite successfully. Can we say the same about the new cooling solution from the Korean Zalman Company – the hybrid VF2000 LED cooler? Well, our today’s review will answer this question for you. I have to point out right away though that you shouldn’t be discouraged by the term “hybrid” in the cooler name. It merely means that the cooler can be installed onto CPUs as well as graphics cards. Maybe Zalman marketing people believed that calling a solution like that “universal” could be too common and not appealing enough that is why they used a pretty untraditional term for a cooling solution. So, let’s take a closer look at this cooler now.
The cardboard box with the new cooler is pretty small and has two windows cut-out in the front and the back sides of the box, which reveal the cooler inside:
The cooler box lists the main features of this cooler that are all marked with small tags on the front of the box as well. There is also a table with the technical specs of the cooler on the back of the box.
Inside the cardboard box there is a small box with accessories and the cooler sealed in robust plastic casing that protects it against all sorts of possible transportation damages:
All accessories bundled with Zalman VF2000 LED are sealed in three plastic bags: a processor retention kit, a graphics card retention kit and the rest of the components. There is also installation manual in two different languages:
Here is what you get in those small plastic baggies:
You can see retention plates and mounting spindles for installation onto a CPU, heatsinks with mounting spindles and rubber rings for installation onto a graphics card, fan rotation speed controller with a long cable and double-sided sticky tape, as well as three tubes of Zalman thermal compound and a manufacturer logo sticker.
This new cooler is made in Korea (most likely South Korea) and retails for $54.95.
Zalman VF2000 LED is a cooler of very modest size. It measures 126 x 110 x 45 mm. The latter number allows us to consider it a low-profile processor cooler, although when Zalman designed their VF2000 LED they were pursuing a completely different goal: to make sure that the cooler would fit perfectly onto a graphics accelerator, too.
In terms of design, Zalman VF2000 LED looks more like a graphics card cooler, rather than a CPU cooler. It includes an aluminum heatsink made of 58 plates that sit on four copper heatpipes 6 mm in diameter. The heatpipes come out of the cooper base plate. All heatsink parts of this cooling solution are nickel-plated.
New cooler weighs only 290 g. According to the official specifications, its heatsink plates are 0.3 mm thick. The gap between the plates measures about 1.3-1.4 mm. Zalman engineers implemented new VFP (Variable Fin Profile) technology in their heatsink. It implies that the heatsink plates are all of variable height, which according to Zalman provides “optimized cooling efficiency and maximized dissipation area”. Another part of VFP technology is a 92x15 mm fan sitting inside a hollow in the center of the heatsink.
The fan rotation speed can be adjusted in the interval from 1400 to 2350 RPM using the provided FanMate 2 rotation speed controller. The fan will generated from 19 to 29 dBA of noise. It is built with two ball bearings, which MTBF is not specified among the cooler technical details. I tried to remove the fan from the heatsink in order to examine it and determine its actual manufacturer, but I failed.
The heatpipes are soldered to the cooler base. The finish quality of the base plate is impeccably perfect:
The evenness of the base is also superb: it produces ideal thermal compound imprints on a glass surface, CPU heat-spreader as well as on the GPU die:
I believe that’s about all I can say on the design of the new Zalman VF2000 LED cooler. Now let’s move on to the installation procedure. It should be just as interesting, because as we have already said, we can install the new cooler onto the CPU as well as graphics card.
It is very important to point out that you get a detailed and very easy to understand installation instructions together with the cooler, but you can also download them from the official company web-site. We would like to discuss graphics card installation procedure first.
Here is the list of graphics solutions compatible with the Zalman VF2000 LED cooler:
At the time of tests I only had ATI Radeon HD 4870 at my disposal. So we are going to use it for our further experiments with Zalman VF2000 LED. Here is a complete schematic of the graphics card installation procedure:
As you know, Radeon HD 4870/4890 graphics cards require special cooling of their voltage regulator components. Unfortunately, there were no special heatsinks among the standard accessories bundled with Zalman VF2000 LED that we received for our review. However, in the end of June Zalman announced a new massive heatsink called ZM-RHS90 designed specifically for this purpose. But since we didn’t have it available at the time of tests, we had to remove the lower plate from the reference Radeon HD 4870 cooler and put it back on the card:
However, this trick didn’t work, because when I tried to install Zalman VF2000 LED, its heatpipes hit against one of the sides of this plate that is why we had to give up the idea of using it together with Zalman and leave the voltage regulator components “naked”. We decided that since Zalman didn’t include anything with the cooler but listed Radeon HD 4870 among the supported graphics solution, then they must be taking the responsibility for whatever may happen to the graphics card during the tests.
As for the actual installation of Zalman VF2000 LED cooler onto the graphics card, it is extremely simple. First you have to insert the mounting spindles with rubber rings into the loops on the retention panels attached to the cooler base and then secure the cooler by tightening the screw-nuts placed over washers at the bottom of the card PCB:
This is what a graphics card with a new Zalman VF2000 LED cooler looks like:
The top view shows that two slots next to the graphics card must be empty. You can read the same in the installation instructions for the graphics cards.
Mild blue lighting looks pretty attractive in the dark:
I have to add that I didn’t stick the heatsinks onto the memory chips during our test session.
Now let’s discuss Zalman VF2000 LED installation onto mainboards and processors. This cooler is compatible with AMD Socket AM2 and AM2+ CPUs as well as with Intel LGA775 processors. It was a little strange to see no retention for LGA1366 platform, which will make it hard for this cooler to become truly popular in the contemporary market.
The following schematics show the installation procedure in detail for each type of platform:
Everything seems to be pretty simple, but at this point we faced some problems. For example, we couldn’t install Zalman VF2000 LED cooler onto a DFI LANPARTY DK X48-T2RS mainboard (LGA775), no matter which way we turned it, because it was always pressed against the heatsinks over the voltage regulator components and mainboard chipset:
Since the cooler cannot be installed onto an LGA1366 platform, I couldn’t use the Asus P6T Deluxe that I had at my disposal. So the only option left was a Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H mainboard for Socket AM2+:
There are heatsinks around the processor socket on this board, too, but they didn’t interfere with Zalman VF2000 LED because they are a little farther away. I strongly recommend you to make sure that this cooler is compatible or incompatible with your mainboard before you buy it.
The cooler is installed on a CPU the same way as on a graphics card. The only difference is that the mounting spindles with rubber rings are in this case inserted not into the loops on the retention panels attached to the cooler base but into the retention panels inserted into a special groove in the base plate and fastened with additional screws:
There is no mention in the manual on the preferable cooler positioning during CPU use. According to our experience with coolers of top-design (when the airflow is directed towards the mainboard surface), these coolers work best when the ends of their heatpipes are facing up. However, in our case the heatpipes were interfering with the chipset heatsink. That is why we had to install Zalman VF2000 LED with the heatpipes lining up horizontally (when the mainboard is installed into the system case):
Below are two more photographs of the cooler on the CPU and mainboard:
Although the heatpipes coming out of the cooler base were running very close to other components on the mainboard, they didn’t prevent us from installing a memory module into the first DIMM slot.
Mild blue lighting is also working when the cooler is installed onto the CPU:
Well, that’s about all I wanted to mention regarding the cooler installation. Let’s check out the detailed technical specs and move over to test results:
Zalman VF2000 LED was tested in identical conditions on the graphics card and CPU. We assembled two test platforms for our performance tests:
Operating system, graphics card driver and other software were identical for both platforms (except for the chipset driver): Windows Vista Ultimate Edition x86 SP1, AMD Catalyst 9.6 and DirectX End-User Runtimes (March 2009).
First I’d like to say a few words about the testing methodology on the VGA card. The graphics processors and the graphics card as a whole were loaded in two ways. First we used 15 runs of Firefly Forest test from the synthetic 3DMark 2006 graphics suite in 1920x1200 resolution with 16x anisotropic filtering. This test mode will allow us to determine approximately what temperature mode will the graphics card experience in games. In the second case, we used FurMark utility version 1.6.5 in stability test mode to load the graphics card in 1280x1024 resolution. The tests here were performed for about 15 minutes up until the temperatures of the graphics processor and voltage regulator components became fully stable at their maximum point. We used RivaTuner v2.24 (by A. Nikolaichuk aka Unwinder) to monitor frequencies and temperatures.
Now a few words about the testing methodology on the CPU. We heated up AMD processor with OCCT Perestroika version 3.1.0. We ran a CPU test for 23 minutes, when the first and fourth minutes the system was idle to ensure that the temperature had time to stabilize. We monitored the CPU core temperature using CoreTemp utility of the latest version available at the time of tests. The stabilization period for the CPU temperature between the two consecutive test cycles was about 10 minutes. We took the maximum temperature of the hottest processor core of the four for the results charts. The ambient temperature was checked next to the system case with an electronic thermometer with 0.1 °C precision that allows monitoring the temperature changes over the past 6 hours. During our test session room temperature was unusually high and stayed at 26.5-27 °C.
During this test session we managed to overclock our AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition processor used for Zalman VF2000 LED tests to 3.52 GHz by changing the unlocked multiplier. The nominal processor Vcore was increased to 1.45 V in the mainboard BIOS.
This is very modest overclocking, just as the cooler itself.
As for the Zalman competitor, things are not that simple either. During the graphics card tests we can easily compare it against a reference Radeon HD 4870 cooling solution with not only high level of generated noise but also high cooling efficiency. However, when it came to CPU tests it turned out not that easy to find a proper rival for Zalman VF2000 LED. I didn’t have any low-profile hybrid coolers at my disposal that is why it didn’t make sense to perform the comparison from this standpoint. The only criterion left was the price, and here we could consider Scythe Kabuto retailing for $48 to be a possible opponent.
So, we will use it for our comparison today. Of course, Scythe Kabuto can’t be installed onto a graphics card and it is definitely not a low-profile cooler, but its price is comparable to that of Zalman VF2000 LED. Besides, both these coolers create similarly directed airflow.
First of all let’s check how well Zalman VF2000 LED copes with a graphics card. However, I have to say right away that unfortunately, we couldn’t complete the graphics card test with Zalman VF2000 LED cooler in FurMark for the following reason:
The GPU temperature was unusually slow even for a hot graphics card like that, but the VRM temperature reached152 °C 42 seconds into the test. That is why we had to terminate the test at this point to avoid a fatal outcome for our quite expensive graphics accelerator. However, there is nothing unexpected here, because leaving the voltage regulator components of a Radeon HD 4870 without any cooling (as you remember, we are testing Zalman VF2000 LED as is) is practically the same as accelerating on a Formula 1 with a covered engine air duct.
As for the reference cooler of Radeon HD 4870, it did do its job in all test modes, even though the noise level was pretty high:
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You can see from the screenshots above that the graphics processor temperature with the reference cooler in play is higher than that with the Zalman VF2000 LED. The same is true according to the results of 3DMark 2006 test, where the voltage regulator circuitry is loaded less and where the new cooler worked perfectly fine:
In terms of VRM temperature, Zalman VF2000 LED loses again to the reference cooler of the Radeon HD 4870, but this is something we have actually expected. However, the fact that the new Zalman solution easily defeated the massive copper Radeon cooler in GPU temperatures turned out quite a surprise. I have to admit that I didn’t expect a relatively modest and small cooler like Zalman VF2000 LED to demonstrate such remarkable efficiency. Note that Zalman’s advantage over the reference cooler often reaches up to 20 °C! if you remember, not too long ago when we tested a three times larger Arctic Cooling Accelero Extreme GTX cooler it also showed a remarkable advantage over the GeForce GTX 260 reference cooler. And most interestingly, it also had the same problems with VRM cooling! Knowing about it Zalman took care of the issue having released a special ZM-RHS90 unit intended for the cooling of these particular components shortly after launching their Zalman VF2000 LED.
Now let’s take a look at the cooling efficiency of our testing participants during CPU tests:
I have to say that it showed tremendous cooling potential. I doubt that anyone hoped to see the low-profile Zalman VF2000 LED as a serious rival to one of the most efficient top-coolers. Simply because it wasn’t the manufacturer’s ultimate goal. The mere fact that it is possible to overclock a processor with this cooling solution on it is a great achievement already, especially since it can be done at the minimal fan rotation speed. At maximum fan rotation speed AMD Phenom II X4 remained stable up until 3.65 GHz without any additional voltage increase, which is a very good result for a 260 g cooler as tall as only 45 mm.
As for the level of noise the new solution generates, everything is pretty simple. AT minimal fan rotation speed of 1350 RPM you can’t hear Zalman VF2000 LED against the background of a working system case with quiet components inside (less than 33 dBA at a 1 m distance). The cooler remains within acoustic comfort zone up until 1850 RPM when its noise exceeds 34.5 dBA. And after that in the interval from 1850 to 2450 RPM the cooler noise gradually increases up until 38.9 dBA and I doubt that anyone will be using it constantly in this loud mode. Here Zalman VF2000 LED yields to Scythe Kabuto quite significantly, but the reference Radeon HD 4870 cooler again remains an outcast, because its noise level is tremendous. We didn’t notice any parasitic noises coming from the Zalman VF2000 LED fan, such as crackling, howling and etc. So, now it is time to sum everything up.
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.
