Zalman CNPS9700LED Ultra Quiet Cpu Cooler

by Zalman

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3.6 x 4.9 x 5.6 inches ; 1.7 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000JSFZPS
• Item model number: CNPS9700LED
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (69 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #12 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Computer Components > Fans & Cooling > CPU Cooling Fans
• Date first available at Amazon.com: October 2, 2001

Product Description

ZAL FN CNPS9700LED Cooler AM2 Cooler for CPU and MB

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very cool, very quiet, August 25, 2008

By 

Harvey Ramos "Geek" (Springfield, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Zalman CNPS9700LED Ultra Quiet Cpu Cooler (Personal Computers)

This is an excellent cooler not just for people looking to overclock their computers, but also for anyone looking for a quiet cooling solution for their CPU. It offers great cooling as well as very low noise.

The design is excellent and extremely attractive to look at if you have a case that lets you see inside. The blue LEDs really set off the copper fins.

As others have mentioned, this cooler is *very large, so make sure you look at the dimensions to see if it will fit in your case. Odds are, if you have a 120mm exhaust fan in your case this should fit. The cooling fins are held above the motherboard, so you shouldn't have any trouble with motherboard heatsinks touching the zalman. Your main concern is the height of the cooler fitting in the case. This cooler can also be set in any orientation (providing you have the room) to blow air front, back, up or down depending on how you have your airflow setup. Most people will set this to blow air out the back of the case, and usually this will lineup directly with your case's exhaust fan.

Mounting is very easy, although you will definitely have to remove the motherboard from the case as it comes with its own backplate. The backplate and mount screw right in and after you apply thermal paste to the CPU (there is a zalman paste that comes with this, or you can get the better Artic Silver 5 also called AS5) the cooler screws right into the mount. The included directions and a little common sense are all you need.

Once installed, you can choose to plug this into your motherboard and let it decide the fan speed or you can use the included Fan Mate 2 controller to manually control the speed of the fan. I use the fan mate controller to turn the speed down all the way to "silent". At that setting it really is silent, as I can hear everything else including hard drives, power supply, video card, etc before I hear this fan. If I'm doing something where I know I need extra cooling, I just turn the controller up a little bit, but usually it stays in silent.

For me, the controller kept my Q6600 quad core at 28c (82F) at idle and 47c (116F) during full load with stock speed at 2.4Ghz. With the Q6600 overclocked to 3.2Ghz, temperature only increases to 30c at idle and 50c at full load. Those are very good temperatures and were achieved at a lot less noise than with the standard cooler that comes with the chip.

Other coolers that are comparable in both cost, performance and noise are the Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme and Tuniq Tower.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wicked Cool, December 16, 2007

By 

Jonathan J. Innerarity (Miami, FL, USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Zalman CNPS9700LED Ultra Quiet Cpu Cooler (Personal Computers)

I just built a new system using a Core 2 Duo E6750 chip and added this cooler with Arctic Silver thermal grease. I'm using the Raidmax Smilodon Extreme Black case (the one with the green LEDs). It's got four fans, two to bring air into the machine and two to exhale.

My machine runs in an air conditioned room, so I've actually recorded really low temperatures at idle. So far I've recorded a steady 27° C with this cooler. It's absolutely amazing. I notice that the fan automatically powers down (in RPMs) once the ambient temperature in my room hits 17° C (bringing the ambient inside the case to sub 20° C). The fan automatically speeds back up with the AC unit turned off. It's quite brilliant. The Zalman 9700's blue glow seen through my cases' side panel adds a nice counterpoint to the otherwise green LED fans inside the case and the Mushkin powersupply.

Great stuff. I highly recommend this to any DIY tech enthusiast. Make sure that you get the Arctic Silver thermal grease when you buy this. Don't use the thermal grease that comes with this unit. You won't get as low temps as you would without it.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First Time PC Builder and I'm a girl and can install this!, December 28, 2009

By 

S. Jenkins "Arshes Nei" (Torrance CA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Zalman CNPS9700LED Ultra Quiet Cpu Cooler (Personal Computers)

Length:: 0:11 Mins

This was the fan I bought for my Intel Extreme Quad. QX6850 Intel Cpu Core 2 Duo Qx6850 3.00Ghz Fsb1333Mhz 8M Lga775 Extreme Tray
The processor was used but given as a gift, so I had no choice but to get an aftermarket fan since I wasn't given a cooler. I was aware of the cpu prone to heating, so I went with this fan.

I really had no problems following the instructions for installing this cooler. They were clear enough. I only had a bit of trouble because the fan is HUGE. So I was careful about installing the bracket. I just kept myself grounded and used cardboard (those Amazon boxes come in handy) while installing it to the motherboard.

If you do not have the right kind of cable management tower, you will have to take the motherboard out to put in the supporting bracket behind the motherboard. I'd say you'd still have to do it due to the weight of the device.

I installed this inside an Atec 300 case. I really advise making sure you have the right size case since this is a large cooler. It may also help to have a pair of gloves if you have sensitive skin prone to cutting as the blades can be a bit sharp. (I wasn't cut once during the installation).

Whether or not you need to use Artic Silver is debatable as my CPU temps are around 20-25C on idle. The grease is like nail polish, and I advise just coating one side. either on the cpu side or heatsink side of the fan is good enough. I've watched enough videos before doing this build to know how much to put on.

I used a Gigabyte Motherboard so the only bit of trouble was fitting the 8 pin ATX while assembling the PC. I just had to be aware of some wires, but I got used to it now.

Are there some troubles installing the cooler? Yes. Was it really hard to install? No. Let's put it this way. I have never owned my own PC, while I have have been around desktops at work, I never had one at home for the 11 years I've left home. So from scratch I was able to research and get the right parts around that Intel chip, including the fan. I've assembled the this unit myself. I got about all parts except the PSU (The Apevia Warlock in this video) and some memory from Amazon.com. On top of that, I'm female!

If I can assemble a PC from scratch with this huge thing, so can you.