[nextpage title=”Introduction”]
The CNPS7X LED is a CPU cooler from Zalman with two heatsinks in “V” configuration, three U-shape heatpipes and a 92 mm fan. Check it out!
The portrayed cooler looks like a “little brother” of the CNPS11X Extreme, which we already reviewed, as both have twin heatsinks in “V” configuration.
The CNPS7X LED comes in a cardboard box, as you can see in Figure 1.
Figure 2 shows what the box contains: The cooler itself, manual, installation hardware, a small bag of thermal compound, and a power adapter.
This cooler is discussed in detail in the following pages.
[nextpage title=”The Zalman CNPS7X LED”]
Figure 3 reveals the front side of the cooler, where you see the 92 mm fan, which has blue LEDs.
Figure 4 presents the side of the cooler.
Figure 5 shows the back of the cooler. Notice that the heatsinks are connected, and the center of the rear side is closed, forcing the air to pass through the side heatsinks.
The top of the cooler is shown in Figure 6.
[nextpage title=”The Zalman CNPS7X LED (Cont’d)”]
Figure 7 shows the base of the cooler. The three heatpipes keep direct contact to the CPU. The base surface is not polished enough for a mirror-like look.
In Figure 8, you can see the heatsink without the fan.
The 92 mm fan is shown in Figure 9. It has a four-pin connector, which means it is compatible with PWM speed control.
[nextpage title=”Installation”]
Figure 10 shows the frames used to install the CNPS7X LED. The left one fits socket LGA1366 motherboard, while the right frame is intended to be used on sockets 775, 1155, and 1156 systems. You can also see the small bag of thermal compound and a power adapter which can be used to reduce the maximum fan speed.
Figure 10: Frames, thermal compound and power adapter
Figure 11 illustrates the frame installed on our motherboard. On AMD processors, there is no need to install a frame because the clips at the base of the cooler are hooked on the stock motherboard frame.
Figure 11: Holding system installed
In Figure 12, you can see the cooler installed on your computer. Notice we had to install the cooler in an orientation that differs from the position we usually install the coolers we review, since in the other position, the screw that holds the cooler was blocked by the motherboard chipset heatsink.
Figure 12: Installed in our system
[nextpage title=”How We Tested”]
We tested the cooler with a Core i7-860 CPU (quad-core, 2.8 GHz), which is a socket LGA1156 processor with a 95 W TDP (Thermal Design Power). In order to get higher thermal dissipation, we overclocked it to 3.3 GHz (150 MHz base clock and 22x multiplier), keeping the standard core voltage (Vcore), which was the maximum stable overclock we could make with the stock cooler. Keep in mind that we could have raised the CPU clock more, but to include the stock cooler in our comparison, we needed to use this moderate overclock.
We measured noise and temperature with the CPU idle and under full load. In order to get 100% CPU usage in all threads, we ran Prime 95 25.11 with the "In-place Large FFTs" option. (In this version, the software uses all available threads.)
We compared the tested cooler to the Intel stock cooler with a copper base (included with the CPU), as well as with other coolers. Note that in the past, we tested coolers with a socket LGA775 CPU, and we retested some "old" coolers with this new methodology. This means you can find different values in older reviews than the values you will read in the next page. Every cooler was tested with the thermal compound that accompanies it.
Room temperature measurements were taken with a digital thermometer. The core temperature was read with the SpeedFan program (available from the CPU thermal sensors), using an arithmetic average of the core temperature readings. During the tests, the left panel of the case was open.
The sound pressure level (SPL) was measured with a digital noise meter, with its sensor placed 4" (10 cm) from the fan. We turned off the case and video board cooler fans so they wouldn’t interfere with the results. This measurement is only for comparison purposes, because a precise SPL measurement needs to be made inside an acoustically insulated room with no oth
er noise sources, which isn’t the case here.
Hardware Configuration
- Processor: Core i7-860
- Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD6
- Memory: 2 GB Markvision (DDR3-1333/PC3-10700 with 9-9-9-22 timings), configured at 1,200 MHz
- Hard disk: Seagate Barracuda XT 2 TB
- Video card: Zotac GeForce GTS 250
- Video resolution: 1680×1050
- Video monitor: Samsung Syncmaster 2232BW Plus
- Power supply: Seventeam ST-550P-AM
- Case: 3RSystem L-1100 T.REX Cool
Operating System Configuration
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Software Used
Error Margin
We adopted a 2 °C error margin, meaning temperature differences below 2 °C are considered irrelevant.
[nextpage title=”Our Tests”]
The table below presents the results of our measurements. We repeated the same test on all coolers listed below. Each measurement was taken with the CPU at idle and at full load. In the models with a fan supporting PWM, the motherboard controlled the fan speed according to core load and temperature. On coolers with an integrated fan controller, the fan was set at the minimum speed on the idle test and at full speed on the full load test.
Idle Processor |
Processor at Full Load |
||||||
Cooler | Room Temp. | Noise | Speed | Core Temp. | Noise | Speed | Core Temp. |
Intel stock (socket LGA1156) | 14 °C | 44 dBA | 1700 rpm | 46 °C | 54 dBA | 2500 rpm | 90 °C |
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 G1 | 14 °C | 47 dBA | 2050 rpm | 33 °C | 56 dBA | 2900 rpm | 62 °C |
Zalman CNPS10X Extreme | 14 °C | 45 dBA | 1400 rpm | 27 °C | 53 dBA | 1950 rpm | 51 °C |
Thermaltake Silent 1156 | 14 °C | 44 dBA | 1200 rpm | 38 °C | 49 dBA | 1750 rpm | 69 °C |
Noctua NH-D14 | 14 °C | 49 dBA | 1250 rpm | 27 °C | 49 dBA | 1250 rpm | 53 °C |
Zalman CNPS10X Performa | 14 °C | 46 dBA | 1500 rpm | 28 °C | 52 dBA | 1950 rpm | 54 °C |
Prolimatech Megahalems | 14 °C | 40 dBA | 750 rpm | 27 °C | 60 dBA | 2550 rpm | 50 °C |
Thermaltake Frio | 14 °C | 46 dBA | 1450 rpm | 27 °C | 60 dBA | 2500 rpm | 50 °C |
Prolimatech Samuel 17 | 14 °C | 40 dBA | 750 rpm | 40 °C | 60 dBA | 2550 rpm | 63 °C |
Zalman CNPS8000A | 18 °C | 43 dBA | 1400 rpm | 39 °C | 54 dBA | 2500 rpm | 70 °C |
Spire TherMax Eclipse II | 14 °C | 55 dBA | 2200 rpm | 28 °C | 55 dBA | 2200 rpm | 53 °C |
Scythe Ninja3 | 17 °C | 39 dBA | 700 rpm | 32 °C | 55 dBA | 1800 rpm | 57 °C |
Corsair A50 | 18 °C | 52 dBA | 1900 rpm | 33 °C | 52 dBA | 1900 rpm | 60 °C |
Thermaltake Jing | 18 °C | 44 dBA | 850 rpm | 34 °C | 49 dBA | 1300 rpm | 60 °C< /td> |
GlacialTech Alaska | 18 °C | 43 dBA | 1150 rpm | 36 °C | 51 dBA | 1600 rpm | 60 °C |
Deepcool Gamer Storm | 18 °C | 43 dBA | 1100 rpm | 35 °C | 48 dBA | 1600 rpm | 62 °C |
Corsair A70 | 26 °C | 56 dBA | 1900 rpm | 40 °C | 56 dBA | 1900 rpm | 65 °C |
Deepcool Ice Blade Pro | 23 °C | 45 dBA | 1200 rpm | 38 °C | 52 dBA | 1500 rpm | 64 °C |
AC Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2 | 23 °C | 47 dBA | 1750 rpm | 44 °C | 51 dBA | 2100 rpm | 77 °C |
Corsair H70 | 27 °C | 60 dBA | 1900 rpm | 37 °C | 60 dBA | 1900 rpm | 61 °C |
Zalman CNPS9900 Max | 27 °C | 55 dBA | 1600 rpm | 38 °C | 58 dBA | 1750 rpm | 63 °C |
Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP | 25 °C | 45 dBA | 1700 rpm | 51 °C | 49 dBA | 1950 rpm | 91 °C |
CoolIT Vantage | 26 °C | 60 dBA | 2500 rpm | 37 °C | 60 dBA | 2500 rpm | 62 °C |
Deepcool Ice Matrix 600 | 25 °C | 46 dBA | 1100 rpm | 41 °C | 53 dBA | 1300 rpm | 69 °C |
Titan Hati | 26 °C | 46 dBA | 1500 rpm | 40 °C | 57 dBA | 2450 rpm | 68 °C |
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 | 27 °C | 49 dBA | 1950 rpm | 41 °C | 53 dBA | 2300 rpm | 70 °C |
Noctua NH-C14 | 26 °C | 52 dBA | 1300 rpm | 37 °C | 52 dBA | 1300 rpm | 61 °C |
Intel XTS100H | 26 °C | 49 dBA | 1200 rpm | 42 °C | 64 dBA | 2600 rpm | 68 °C |
Zalman CNPS5X SZ | 23 °C | 52 dBA | 2250 rpm | 38 °C | 57 dBA | 2950 rpm | 69 °C |
Thermaltake SlimX3 | 21 °C | 50 dBA | 2700 rpm | 46 °C | 50 dBA | 2750 rpm | 99 °C |
Cooler Master Hyper 101 | 21 °C | 50 dBA | 2600 rpm | 38 °C | 57 dBA | 3300 rpm | 71 °C |
Antec Kühler H2O 620 | 19 °C | 52 dBA | 1400 rpm | 34 °C | 55 dBA | 1400 rpm | 58 °C |
Arctic Cooling Freezer 13 Pro | 20 °C | 46 dBA | 1100 rpm | 36 °C | 49 dBA | 1300 rpm | 62 °C |
GlacialTech Siberia | 22 °C | 49 dBA | 1400 rpm | 34 °C | 49 dBA | 1400 rpm | 61 °C |
Evercool Transformer 3 | 18 °C | 46 dBA | 1800 rpm | 33 °C | 51 dBA | 2250 rpm | 65 °C |
Zalman CNPS11X Extreme | 20 °C | 51 dBA | 1850 rpm | 34 °C | 56 dBA | 2050 rpm | 61 °C |
Thermaltake Frio OCK | 15 °C | 44 dBA | 1000 rpm | 27 °C | 64 dBA | 2200 rpm | 51 °C |
Prolimatech Genesis | 18 °C | 49 dBA | 1050 rpm | 30 °C | 49 dBA | 1050 rpm | 54 °C |
Arctic Cooling Freezer XTREME Rev. 2 | 15 °C | 41 dBA | 1050 rpm | 32 °C | 44 dBA | 1400 rpm | 60 °C |
NZXT HAVIK 140 | 16 °C | 48 dBA | 1250 rpm | 29 °C | 49 dBA | 1250 rpm | 55 °C |
Antec Kühler H2O 920 | 18 °C | 41 dBA | 650 rpm | 29 °C | 64 dBA | 2500 rpm | 49 °C |
Zalman CNP7X LED | 18 °C | 45 dBA | 1950 rpm | 33 °C | 48 dBA | 2150 rpm | 58 °C |
In the graph below, at full load you can see how many degrees Celsius hotter the CPU core is than the air outside the case. The lower this difference, the better is the performance of the cooler.
[nextpage title=”Main Specifications”]
The main specifications for the Zalman CNPS7X LED CPU cooler include:
- Application: Sockets 775, 1155, 1156, 1366, AM2, AM2+, and AM3 processors
- Dimensions: 5.0 x 3.5 x 5.3 inches (127 x 90 x 135 mm) (W x L x H)
- Fins: Aluminum
- Base: Aluminum, with heatpipes directly touching the CPU
- Heat-pipes: Three copper heat-pipes
- Fan: 92 mm
- Nominal fan speed: 1950 rpm
- Fan air flow: Not informed
- Maximum power consumption: Not informed
- Nominal noise level: 25 dBA
- Weight: 12.7 lbs (360 g)
- More information: https://www.zalman.com
- Average Price in the US*: USD 45.00
* Researched at Newegg.com on the day we published this review.
[nextpage title=”Conclusions”]
Zalman successfully combined small size, low noise, and high cooling performance in the CNPS7X LED CPU cooler.
The CNPS7X LED is also easy to install, but keep in mind that the large clip at the base of the cooler can be a problem with motherboards where the chipset heatsink is too close to the CPU socket.
With high cooling performance, silence, and relatively low price tag, the Zalman CNPS7X LED receives the Hardware Secrets Silver Award.
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