Zalman CNPS 8X Optima, High Performance CPU Air Cooler with Direct Tough Heat-Pipe, 100mm Shark Fin Blade Fan Applied, Easy & Simple Installment

Zalman does it again, providing another inexpensive, excellent cooling option in the CNPS10X OPTIMA. It is perhaps slightly less efficient in terms of raw cooling potential than the cooler master 212, but (in my opinion) looks a lot better(I own both). It is worth noting that as a 120mm tower style cooler you may encounter clearance issues with tall ram heatspreaders, or other tall motherboard components over 1 5/8ths in tall, for instance on my evga x58 sli it won't clear the chipset cooler and had to be mounted horizontally exhausting up rather than my preferred front to back airflow orientation. And that's not to mention the case vertical clearance requirements, as it stands at almost exactly 6" tall.It does come with a spring mount for a second 120mm fan to run it in push-pull to either increase cooling efficiency with a pwm splitter(not included), or run more silently with an inline resistor(also not included), as well as mounting hardware for a number of cpu socket choices on both teams(including notably LGA 775).Still, it does the job of keeping a mildly overclocked i7 950 relatively cool, however, If you want a more substantial overclock, spend more than $24 on your cpu cooler. This is basically(as the 212 evo) aimed squarely at the "broke, but enthusiast" market, If you require a basic cooler to cool a non overclocked cpu, there are a number of 92mm options available that will give you fewer fitting headaches(zalman makes several), and if you're demanding an extreme OC, you'll probably want to look at either a higher end air cooler or water cooling option.

This is both one of the nicest, and one of the worst, coolers I've ever used.Pros: Many. This cooler is quiet as heck, light, and provides great cooling. (35C idle on my Phenom II 965 Black Edition, which is a notoriously hot chip.) For it's cooling ability, it's also quite compact. The included fan is quiet and works well.Cons: The cooler is an absolute MONSTER to install. There are no instructions, and the parts kit might as well have the Meccano name on it. There are so many fasteners and clips and doodads that it's nearly impossible to sort them all out at first. The screws that attach the backplate to the motherboard are ALSO the screws that hold the cooler to the backplate, which makes installation a pain in the tuchas, and the holes are not QUITE large enough for the shoulder screws to fit in properly, which caused (in my case) one of them to seize. Finally, the clips that hold the fans on are wire, and quite tight. While this is normally a good thing, the edges of the fins aren't quite smooth enough to allow the clips to slide smoothly into their grooves. This means that when I was installing a fan, I slipped, and drove the (VERY SHARP) edge of one of the heatsink fins into my finger a good 3-4mm.Overall: I highly recommend this cooler for anyone who has knowledge of coolers and computers in general, but I cannot stress enough that a newbie should NOT PURCHASE this cooler. Be prepared to sacrifice to the computer gods, because if you slip while installing, it's gonna cut the heck out of you. Most of my experience with tower coolers is with Noctua and other high-end coolers, and while those are FAR easier to install, this cooler is VERY inexpensive in comparison. Definitely a bargain buy, and well worth the money if you have the skill to install it.

When I built my computer two years ago, I decided to stick with the stock Intel CPU cooler. Really, this worked quite well until fairly recently. Recently though, my computer started overheating, registering temperatures as high as 100°C when doing intensive things such as playing video games. I was able to remedy this by turning off Turbo-Boost, but then the same games still weren't performing well. (But at least my computer wasn't overheating.) I still don't know what happened exactly, maybe the pegs that hold the cooler on were failing or something. I ended up looking for a CPU cooler that was effective and reasonably priced, and the ZALMAN coolers seemed to fit the bill. I did spring for this over the next level down because I thought not having exposed copper would look nicer in my case, but the fan controller is pretty nice too. The fan controller is detachable and can be put elsewhere via a wire. I ran the wire through the holes in my case designed for water cooling hoses and put some magnetic tape on the back of the controller so that I can stick it on the side/back/top of my computer case, which works quite nicely. Installing the cooler itself was a bit of a pain. I had to move my three sticks of RAM over to make it fit. (I know, three sticks is weird.) The manual, which was pretty helpful, did mention that you should make sure it clears your RAM, but my RAM isn't particularly tall, so I don't know what RAM it would clear. Another annoying thing was that to access the screws under the fan, you need to use the short end of the provided Allen's head wrench and it took me quite a while to fully tighten because I couldn't turn the thing 360°, but instead small amounts at a time. I even removed my GPU and the power connector to my motherboard to make this easier.Once the cooler was finally installed, I tested to make sure it was working well and worried about whether or not I'd be able to fit the side panel back on my case. This thing is super tall, and there's probably less than a coin's thickness between the top of it and the side of my case, but it DID fit. You should make sure it will fit ahead of time. It's 16.5cm tall. (or 165mm)This cooler does work really well, though. I ran GTAV's bench test, which previously maxed my PC out at 100°C, and now it was only registering a max temperature of 62°C, with Turbo-Boost turned back on. This is a significant improvement. I think this was with the fan set to auto-high.The fan has four settings, and a button cycles through them. They are low-auto, medium-auto, high-auto and manual. The three auto-settings give your PC control of the fan speed while keeping it either slow, medium or fast, where manual gives you full control via a potentiometer. All three auto settings on my PC seem fairly loud, at least compared to the stock Intel cooler, but manual set to the lowest setting is alright, but with a trade-off of a higher idling temperature.Overall, now that the cooler is installed and I know the case still fits together, I am quite happy with this cooler and will be glad to be able to play more intensive video games again.Update: I've had this cooler for a while now, and there are definitely things I'm less than happy about concerning it. While everything I'd previously written still holds true, I at some point wanted to rid myself of the external fan controller. As it turns out, the fan can be run without the fan controller, and there are two ways of going about this:1. You can simply not have the fan controller connected. This will run the fans at full blast. Your motherboard will be able to read the speed of the fan, but it will be unable to control it.2. You can disconnect the main connector from the motherboard and put the extension wire for the fan controller in its place. The fan will be powered through this wire. This allows the system to control the speed of the fan so that it isn't always running at full blast. However, it will not be able to read the fan speed. I find this rather obnoxious. I'll probably at some point replace the fan entirely and connect the new one directly to the board.My motherboard actually has two CPU fan headers, and I tried connecting the main power cable to the three pin so it could read the speed and the control cable to the four pin so it could control the speed. However, this caused my system to refuse to power. (Perhaps a short?) Once I unplugged this, the motherboard threw an error. (Which was easy enough to fix, but still annoying.) So don't try that.So I guess my issue here is that this cooler attempts to force you to use the included fan controller, which I find inconvenient. I don't like that.

This has my CPU running about 30 degrees F cooler when under load, very very quiet too. The Fan makes almost no noise. You just need to make sure it will fit in your case as it is not small. The stock mounts worked for me and I did not have to use the supplied mount so it was really a case of taking off the old cooler and just putting this one in its place. It has been running 24x7 for a few weeks now with no issues.