Testing
The Zalman CNPS9500 AM2 CPU and VF900-Cu LED VGA coolers were tested on an open frame Athlon64/9800 Pro test rig consisting of the components listed below. In addition to the Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound that I normally use for testing HSF’s I also conducted tests with the new Zalman STG1 super thermal grease and a generic white thermal paste (zinc oxide) for comparison. The ambient room air temperature was maintained at 24°C ±0.5°C. The CPU was loaded by running Folding@Home 24/7 and the GPU was loaded by running 3DMark2001 SE. Tests were conducted using the cooler’s integrated fans — with and without the Fan Mate 2. Without the Fan Mate 2, each cooler’s fan was plugged directly into a 3-pin motherboard fan header. When using the Fan Mate 2, the fan speed was adjusted for High, Medium, and Low settings.
(click to enlarge)
- Asus K8N-E Deluxe nForce3-250 motherboard
- AMD Athlon64 3200+ (0.13 mm
- Seasonic SuperTornado 400 watt ATX power supply
- (2) Corsair CMX512-3200C2 DDR RAM
- ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
- WD800JB IDE HDD
- Sony 16X DVD, FDD
- Windows XP Pro with SP1
CNPS9500 AM2 CPU Cooler
To facilitate taking more accurate CPU temperature measurements I attached a very small Omega thermocouple to the side of the Athlon 64 IHS with Arctic Alumina thermal epoxy. The measurement equipment used during testing included:
- CPU/IHS — Barnant Model 115 digital thermometer (accuracy +/- 0.4º C)
- Ambient air — Barnant Model 115 digital thermometer (accuracy +/- 0.4º C)
- Extech Model 407736 digital sound level meter (accuracy +/- 1.5 dB)
For comparison, I included the results from several other popular HSFs for the K8 platform and the stock OEM aluminum cooler that comes bundled with the Athlon 64 3200+. All HSFs were tested on the same CPU under the same conditions.
- Zalman CNPS7000A-Cu with integrated Zalman variable speed fan
- Thermalright Ultra-120 with 120mm Stealth, Panaflo L1A and Delta SHE
- Thermalright Ultra-90 with 92mm SilenX, Panaflo M1A, Panaflo H1BX, and Sunon SHO
- Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro (stock fan at 12V and 7V)
- Cooler Master Hyper 6 with 80mm CM variable speed fan and 80mm Vantec Tornado
- Athlon 64 3200+ OEM aluminum heatsink with 70mm fan
The following data is presented for comparative purposes only. Your actual results may be different depending on the variables unique to your system (CPU, overclock, ambient temperature, case air flow, temperature monitoring, etc).
CPU — Temperature reported by Asus PC Probe utility (internal diode)
Tc — Temperature obtained with calibrated thermocouple attached to IHS
Delta T — Fully loaded Tc temperature rise above ambient
dBA — Sound pressure level recorded 3′ away (background ~30 dBA)
As you can see the CNPS9500 AM2 CPU heatsink fan did a very good job of keeping the fully loaded
