Final Thoughts and Conclusion
Although the Zalman CNPS9900 LED looks great and has the pedigree of a champion, I wasn’t too thrilled about its performance results during our idle and load testing. While the Vigor Monsoon III LT is no slouch when it comes to CPU cooling, we’ve come to expect more from Zalman over the years.
The standard Zalman heatsinks are held to might be a bit unfair, but their history certainly makes them a target for any vendor who wants to knock them off the top spot in the air-cooled heatsink industry. While the dual-heatsink design is sound on paper, I don’t think it worked when it was executed. I might be making something out of nothing because the results were very close to the Monsoon III LT, but it just seems that their heatsinks should stand out from the pack and not just stay even with them. Overall, it did function as advertised and provided more than adequate cooling for our i7-920. So, in those respects, we should give kudos to Zalman for a job well done.
Pricing
The Zalman CNPS9000 LED heatsink is currently priced at $74.99 with free shipping at Newegg.com.
Strengths:
- Dual-heatsink design
- 100% copper
- Three copper heatpipes that act as a frame for the entire component
- Low RPM fan extremely silent during operation
- Easy installation
Weaknesses:
- Average test results during idle, load testing
- Expensive
I would like to thank our friends at Zalman for sending us the CNPS9900 LED heatsink to review. Be sure to use our price checking engine to find the best price on any of Zalman’s products or anything else you may want to buy!
