Zalman is a name you'll find thrown around a lot if you frequent the PcApex forums or other computer enthusiast sites. They've made a name for themselves by engineering heat sinks to satisfy both extremes in the after-market cooler business: performance and noise reduction. The CNPS8000 CPU cooler and VF900-Cu GPU cooler are two of their newest models. While the VF900 has the traditional Zalman look, the CNPS8000 is distinctly uncharacteristic with parallel aluminum fins. This heat sink is the black sheep of the family and is geared especially towards packing everything Zalman has become famous for into a light-weight, low-profile package. The VGA cooler is classic Zalman. With the amount of heat the newest video cards put out it'll need to perform as well as its CPU counterpart.

The CNPS8000 CPU Cooler

Specifications

Package & Contents

The CNPS8000 is shipped in a sturdy box seen below. Contained within is the heat sink, mounting hardware, thermal grease, user's manual, double-sided tape, fan speed controller & cable, and Zalman case sticker (R-Type for nerds? Thank you, Zalman.).

As I said the cooler itself is distinctly non-Zalman. The matter of fact the only way you could guess the manufacturer besides the obvious is the ever-so-annoying noninterchangable fan. I understand the need for such a fan in their other CPU heat sink designs, but this one could have easily been modified to incorporate any typical 92mm axial fan. This design requires less from the user, but I favor easy customization. The fan-speed controller makes up for this downside somewhat, but the maximum air flow rate is still limited to "low-noise mode". This design, in contrast to the normal radially-oriented copper fins, uses 44 stacked aluminum fins to dissipate the heat. The fins are press-fitted to 4 heat pipes that are embedded in the copper base plate. The base plate surface had a very good finish. The scratches are exaggerated in the picture below by the camera flash. The divergence from Zalman's trademark geometry isn't necessarily a bad thing. This design greatly reduces the torque on the socket, blows air onto the motherboard, and is ideal for low profile enclosures. The construction of the CNPS8000 is superb. Try as I might, I couldn't finds any quality control issues or other Achilles heel in the design.

Installation

Installation was child's play, at least for my socket 939 CPU. You simply interlock the mounting clip pieces around the base plate and clip the heat sink onto the stock motherboard retention frame. You do need to check the clearance on your motherboard capacitors and any heat sinks sprinkled around the motherboard. On the DFI LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-D, one of the heat pipes barely cleared a mosfet heat sink. Low profile coolers do have their drawbacks, and the CNPS8000 is no exception. Users with Intel CPUs must replace the retention frame.