• The Zalman 7000Cu Cooler itself
• A package with fasteners for Pentium4 motherboards
• A package with fasteners for Athlon 64 motherboards
• A tube of thermal paste
• "FanMate" speed adjuster
• Installation manual.
Fortunately, Zalman includes excellent documentation with the heatsink, as it is not entirely obvious just how you are supposed to attach it to your motherboard. Instructions are in English and Korean. The manual states that some motherboards feature the "CPU Fan Detect" function, designed to protect your system by not allowing it to boot if a fan is not detected by the BIOS. The problem is that when in “silent” mode, the Zalman cooler’s fan may not spin fast enough for this function, so the manual recommends turning off CPU Fan Detect. Now, how about a look at this beast?
The CNPS 7000-Cu is extremely large, thoroughly trouncing the former champ MCX-4000 in that area. Where it differs from that monster however, is that the base on the CNPS 7000-Cu is actually quite small, allowing the large part to extend out over any capacitors that may line the sides of the ZIF socket, instead of hitting them like the MCX-4000 does.
The design is fairly straightforward. The copper fins are all attached to the center piece. For rigidity, they are linked with pins and fixed with two aluminum plates.
Build quality is excellent (as would be expected for the $50+ price point) and the base is nicely polished with a mirror-like shine. I was unable to find even a single defect.
The fan is mounted in, rather than on, the heatsink (similar to Thermaltake’s Orb series), and is a full 92mm. Its rotation speed is variable between 1350rpm in silent mode and 2400rpm in normal mode. Of course, it wouldn’t be a Zalman without extremely low noise levels. The fan measures approx. 20dBa in silent mode and around 25dBa in normal mode. By comparison, an 80mm Vantec Tornado fan belts out 55db. If you understand the decibel scale, that equals an 8x increase in loudness (10db is a double of perceived volume).
