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@@DarkZenith No, because no one really does that, and for those who do, it's going to be so fan-dependent that it doesn't make any sense. You're basically asking for a fan benchmark.
In fairness, Zalman aren't really claiming a "20 times increase in cooling performance" (although it APPEARS that way because of the translation). They're saying the "Dual heat transfer design of 20X..." [referencing the model #] "...increase..." [bad translation; should be "increases"] "...the cooling performance" [they don't actually say how MUCH]. Nonetheless, they really should word that differently.
@@Zetharion1 at least most of us still know that Noctua has a great relationship with its customers which after sale support, long warranties and replacement parts. That for me is a huge reason why all my case fans and cpu cooler are all Noctua parts
@@darkmarc by up to 3 degrees, potentially. Margin of error goes both ways (+-n°) both ways (Noctua unit and Zalman unit) - so if the margin of error on a single test is +-1°, then comparing two test results would have a potential deviation of +-2°.
I’ll always have fond memories of zalman’s flower style coolers and thermaltake’s golden orb. Some of the best, most prolific coolers back in their days.
@@zarmaanful It does. They often make coolers with "special" design. Then you can only get a replacement fan from them. Rather than just strapping anything to it.
I wouldn't put Noctua as the reference point. Maybe in case of fans they actually do some work, but for their heat sinks design and finish it is a different matter. Their heat sinks are very straight forward - fins out of aluminum, with massive width and product weight to ensure thermal capability. Other manufacturers already moved long time ago to differently shaping the fins producing better heat dissipation, but those guys are stuck in 2010. Furthermore they have poor quality for their products. One of the heat pipes on D15s is too short (at least 2cm) and it not making contact with fins at the top. The base of the heat sinks have very rough contact area. You can see cutting marks left in the copper under nickle plating. It was terrible on D14 and they only slightly improved in D15.
@@gagarin777 Okay, but that begs the question, then what should the reference point be for large air coolers? I'd also point out that "stuck in 2010", well, yeah but the NH-D15 came out in 2014. :) So now a couple of companies have finally pulled even with Noctua. 6 years later. So, if Noctua did it 6 years ago, and are still within margin of error of products that came out in the last couple months how could they not be the reference point? What cooler should be and why?
@@gagarin777 I think you are exaggerating a bit. No way the heatpipes are two centimeter too short and I haven't seen the other flaws you are talking about it person or on pictures either but there is no denying that the fans are the important part of the Noctua coolers. I have to admit I would like to see someone swapping the fans with a different cooler and comparing how the coolers and fans compare.
And it was Zalman of all these companies. in the late 90's and 00's they used to make really top coolers, but then got beaten by so many other companies.
@@MooKyTig I didn't say anything about them (or anyone) using it as reference point for the cooling and thermals in tests. I was reffering to design and finish quality.
I need to see you review the FUMA 2 from Scythe, I own 3 of them, but don't have the means to thermal test like this. Please do a Fuma 2 review/analysis. Thanks!
SAME AS NOCTUA NH-U12A apparently: www.techpowerup.com/review/scythe-fuma-2-dual-tower-cpu-cooler/8.html Must be CAREFUL with cooler reviews as I read this thinking it matched the NH-D15 as the performance graph suggested that and I thought the fan noise was identical, but on closer reading (including the summary) I realized that wasn't the case. The NH-D15 is slightly better though also more expensive so it's arguably overkill for most people. The NH-D14 for example keeps my R9-3900x quiet but perhaps an Intel i9 should have the best air cooler (or liquid cooler) money can buy. The only big issue with CPU coolers is when you hit their maximum cooling potential at which point things can heat up very quickly... if you're under that such as an R7-3700x something like a FUMA 2 is probably going to give you very similar noise to an NH-D15. Noisier, but by such a small degree it's probably hard to justify the cost difference.
Or it's more affordable little brother the Mugen5. I suspect once GN has a solid baseline of $90 big towers established we'll see the $40-$60 range popping in soon.
applemaggot The Mugen 5 is finally going to be in stock on Amazon for MSRP soon too. I’m debating ordering one even though I technically don’t need it. I’m still waiting for my Ninja 5 to be delivered and any new computers I’m look at building won’t support these taller air coolers, but dang it the Mugen 5 is a solid choice for a midrange cooler.
So when are you going to do some more budget focused coolers? IMO, the most valuable info is how much better these big coolers are than your hyper 212s and wraith prisms. I think a serperate piece detailing "baseline" coolers would be pretty nice.
@@GamersNexus i had a macho REV B and my CPu was allways the coolest part and quite silent .. now i ask myself how much better are these bigger air coolers that cost more than twice as much
@@Electric_Doodie That depends on what you are doing with the CPU. If it runs @stock frequency then it doesn't matter much which cooler you have. Although lately increase of the cpu's cores and power consumption went up quite a lot (hence the increase in AIO cooling products on the market). But if you plan on doing some overclocking, then you have to be prepared to pay more for the cooler to have this slightly bigger headroom.
@@GamersNexus OMG Yes ! That would be so awesome! Some of those basic coolers all in the price range of 30bucks ! be quiet! Pure Rock Arctic Freezer 34 Alpenföhn Ben Nevis Advanced Scythe Kotetsu Mark II Hyper 212 That would be awesome! You are the only guys I trust with this topic !
Without even watching this review, but just looking at the product, I can already tell that it suffers from the very reason which chased me (and many others) away from Zalman products so many years ago. I'd say, since the old radial cooler days. The issue is the fan. It's proprietary, and unique. You can't simply put whatever fan you want to. Instead, you're forced to use one of their noisy non-repairable pieces of garbage. It's such a shame that they haven't learned. Especially, since the passive portion of their coolers is usually pretty decent. Unfortunately, their short-sighted greed in trying to force you into using their terrible proprietary fans is what is keeping the smarter consumers far away... Far far away from every product which bears their brand. Only suckers buy their products, and usually only once. Not exactly the smartest marketing decision. Made even more unthinkable, given the fact that the industry is bloated with competitiors who design their products to be more standardized, interchable, swappable, and user-repairable. Sorry to see that they've still got their heads planted firmly up their rear ends. Something tells me that they'll continue to survive doing business the only way they know how... By playing dirty. BTW, if you think the fans are noisy now, give it a few months to collect dust and break-in a bit. You'll see perfectly well why people wind up hating them.
Great point on the fan being difficult to replace. The other brackets don't fit, so I should have noted that replacements wouldn't be that easy. Will try to keep a better eye on maintainability of coolers going forward.
in case you never knew, fans don't really break. (except if you physically break them apart). you just put new lubricant in the bearings and those fans you thought "broke" will start working again.
@@hitler69 What OP means is that their fans are really bad quality. They start getting very noisy after a few months. Doing any kind of maintenance on fans that are less than a year old is unacceptable. My noctua cooler has been running 24/7 for 7 years in my NAS with the original fans and it is still perfectly fine without any kind of maintenance (except the once a year dusting). Same thing with my 212 evo that has been running for around 4 years.
@@hitler69 Fans actually do break. We've had a lot break over the years. The blades can sometimes explode off the fan, depending on how poorly it was manufactured.
@@GamersNexus Longevity is always a great aspect to keep an eye on. So yeah, as much info on maintainability and replaceability as possible is greatly appreciated!
Bro, I always love coming back to the spicy reviews like this to catch some of Steve's professional sass. That "8 dimensional" bit and the way they pick apart the stupid marketing . . . perfect.
@@georgemorley1029 barely louder and barely cooler.. so arguably the same... set ur fan profile and forget it performance was almost identical and i run a d15
A bit late to the party but it kinda annoyed me that Steve seemed a bit biased in this review. Yeah Zalman is shady, but since NH-D15 is basically the king of air coolers and that cooler beats it, even if it's by just 1 degree (It might be within margin of error but I don't suspect Steve ran the tests once to get his results) while not being terribly noisy either, and then labeling the cooler as "average" was disappointing to hear from someone I generally trust with reviewing products fairly.
Sorry Steve but I noticed an incorrect quote, zalman aren’t claiming a 20x performance increase, it’s merely saying it’s optimised for “20X’s” (CNPS “20X”) heatpipe and heat fin design.
That backplate and mounting hardware looks just like the ones used on Thermalright's air coolers. Particularly their 'Macho' line. I bet they are made by the same company.
Yeah, Alpenföhn, Enermax and if I am not mistaken Scythe use similar systems. I wouldn't call it convoluted, just "average". We are just all spoilt by Noctua.
@@BigChungusRedditElite Yeah, I had to hunt down my AMD stock backplate when I upgraded to a Scythe, don't throw anything away! There was an Intel specific backplate though and the not too uncommon but helpful long screwdriver. This was in the $45 Mugen 5 kit.
Back in the day, Zalman had some of the most epic air coolers. Gigantic cooper beasts, actually I saw a pic of one I used to have, they probably still make it. They were my go to before the Hyper 212. Of course I haven’t used an air cooler on my personal build in over 10 years. Oh shit, the reserator! There was a pic of that too lol My buddy still has one, it’s probably 15 years old
I bought a CNPS9900 MAX with a blue led just because it looked cool, holy shit is such an epic cooler. I wish more cpu coolers looked this interesting nowadays
Would go noctua again any day, running the NH-D15 for some years in my main desktop its silent and effective, and if there is any new socket in future you get a mount kit for free.
@@CaveyMoth VR has time manipulation which requires a specific CPU cooler > wow technology boggles the mind, A CPU cooler that can alter space time, wow
The quality and transparency of what you all do is why this is the only channel I trust and get my information from when I'm purchasing new hardware. Thank you.
GN: besides installation process, this cooler has very marginally beat or matched the NH-D15 (widely considered to be the current best air cooler). also GN: it's only average.
They're within error bars of each other, amid performance equivalency, the next factors to consider include warranty, reputation, service, price, ease of installation, maintenance, and others. The performance increase is not statistically significant from the other leading air coolers. They have produced another leading air cooler to join the pack, nothing more and nothing less.
Well, it's technically true that (in that price bracket) it's "the best", but also "average" (all of them are, because they're basically the same). "Average" doesn't mean "mediocre", just that it's the average of some number of data points.
Average for big air coolers, yes. It's the average performance of all the big air coolers. Please understand that we are speaking of arithmetic average, not of normal lexical use of "average."
Thanks for this review. Zalman was the first cooler I bought when I built my first PC. Think it was an AMD 3000+ socket 939. So the name Zalman is really nostalgic to me and hearing about their new products got me excited. Didn't know about their history though and I thought they just disappeared because those coolers weren't good in today's standard. Been wanting another air cooler to replace my custom loop (tired of the maintenance of it) so I might just grab this cooler.
I need to see a Rick and Morty episode where they use a cooler as a weapon against higher dimensional beings. Using the same verbiage in the marketing to describe it.
What about the Dark Rock Pro 4? All the reviews on that I've ever seen say it's more or less a tie with the NHD15, I'd love to see your better testing methodology actually sort out if one's quieter or more capable of cooling.
Personally, I am happy to see Zalman back in the game. I like the looks and if I were building my first rig today I would probably consider this one over Noctua.
Steve I love your comparison videos of coolers. You go down to the nitty gritty, and show that there are differences between products competing in the same lineup, even if those differences are small.
Nice performer, I'm rly happy for them, BUT!! It breaks a very important feature of the air coolers.. Maintenance!! They should stop using custom fan designs, we can't replace/upgrade them that easy. Zalman always did that :/
Do we seriously need to spend half the video discussing a company's parent company's past. If it cools better than a different cooler, then its better. If it doesnt, then its not. Also, its like half the price of most of the others reviewed against
everytime i think of going back to AIOs i hear that barrel roll click of 1month-3year Russian roulette I went through as a system builder from 2013-2018 before i swore them off... but yeah sticking with Noctua.
@@anasevi9456 Hi, not all AiO are bad. You just have to be lucky to have one with a good pump and being able to easily change the liquid. I have a Be Quiet Silent Loop 280 since early 2017 without problems. I just change the liquid with EKWB EK-CryoFuel Clear and remove the air bubbles once a year that's it!!! Always Keep the pump at fix factory default speed never change the pump speed. Never mix metals and and always use some type of antibacterial if you make your own fluid. With the Silent Loop 280 I can do full maintenance of the pump and rad which may not be the case of other AiO products on the market.
I've been looking forward to your testing of this cooler since another high-profile site tested it and claimed something like a 4 degree advantage over the similar-sized Noctua unit (also claiming parity with liquid AIO's). Not surprised, but still disappointed, that this cooler doesn't live up to those claims. Thanks for your quality testing!
The wording of the ads, specs, and so forth is par for the course here in Korea. It's all about buzz words that sound smart or techincally advanced in English. The marketing materials are typically done up by a staff member with a limit amount of English skill, such as someone who spent a year studying English abroad while in university but never gaining a strong proficiency. This is something us native English speakers have just had to get used to since it is also an issue whenever shopping on online markets here, like Gmarket.
My old Zalman Z9 Plus was a solid case, and came with some of the quietest fans I've EVER had, despite being cheap. It's still in use by a friend now. Sad to see what went wrong with their company
It's sad to see a company fall so far, but I'm hoping this is the start of a decent redemption arc. Zalman was the first cooler I ever used so I'm hoping they can stay on the ethical side this time around.
Love the cpu cooler videos! Please do one of the Arctic 34 eSports Duo-it sounds (and looks) like a meme but it has tested really well with other reviewers. But I want to see what the best most thorough reviewer (eg you) has to say about it.
I am surprised that Steve did not complain about the RAM clearance issue with this cooler and that he did not experience any more issues with noise levels. When the Swedish site Sweclockers tested this cooler it was really loud under load, it was to the point they went out and bought a second unit for testing too see if something was wrong since other reviewers had not reported the issue but the second one was just as bad. So this is now confusing to me... 😮
Wow I thought Zalman is done at this point. I still have my 20 year old CNPS 6000-Cu which is a thing of beauty... I'm glad they are back with a decent product again, I just hope their marketing team can keep up with their engineering team. Oh and Steve - great video again! (As usual)
It sux what happened to Zalman. Through the late '90s and early to mid 2000s, they made good products. CNPS9700cu, and CNPS7000cu were among the best at the time. I still have a CNPS 14x in a Core i7 4th gen PC running to this day.
Thank you for doing this review, I have been looking forward to your opinion about it. Also thank you for informing your viewers about Zalman's past shadiness, I was not aware of that.
@@tockar hmm.. it looks like the Fuma 2 would equal the U12A's performance and acoustics for about 2/3 the cost. Until GN reviews them it's hard to know for sure though.
I went with a $70 cooler (AliExpress) with 230 TDP capacity for my needs. Dual fan, RGB fans with an RGB top plate, 4pin PWM, shrouded, 6-nickel-plated heat pipes: RCCooler GI-D66A. Was surprised at the build quality versus a CoolerMaster H412S that it replaced. Benchmarked against top brands, it was surprisingly performant. For a "display" bench PC, that runs a venerable XEON E5-1650V2 overclocked to 4.5Ghz, I have a single 120mm fan SNOWMAN 6 pipe RGB air cooler. That one costs a whopping $28. Again, blows away the H412S in terms of cooling. Build quality is on par with the CoolerMaster. Both coolers are reasonably quiet. PS: The PCCooler GI-R68X is the higher capacity/TDP upgrade to the GI-D66A, with its 8mm nickel plated heat pipes as opposed to 6mm, but it is also $124. Not necessary for my use case.
I like the Zalman coolers of the past. My first was the 9500 (figure 8) used on my socket 939 Amd fx60 and still attached to it. My second cooler was 9900 Max all copper air cooler (figure 8 style again) on my Sandy 2600k. (Still using 9+ years) I liked them for design and moving air 360 degrees around motherboard. I hope they can get things going great in the future of CPU air. Thanks Steve for the interesting history and issues with Zalman's current CNPS20x.
@@lort6022 YES! I had a dual athlon rig with Zalman coolers. Sad to see where they ended up. This looks like a decent tower cooler. All they had to do was market it as such with no bombastic marketing and they would have had a win. Now, we just point and laugh at their four dimensional bio mimetic bullshit.
Yeah, it beats or equals the best air cooler out there. To call it just an averege cooler is just plain unfair. It's actually a spectaculair result and one I didn't expect at all. Having critique on past practices, the marketing and the mounting system is fair tho.
@@Carrinthe Yeah, this is a reviewer holding grudges. Really expected more from GN. It's matching the Noctua, a very well praised cooler, and suddenly that's just average? So what's Noctua then? Below average?
@@Carrinthe is it really that impressive if it doesn't last worth shit? If performance is all it takes then why not just get the cheapest AIO that beats out the noctua by 1 degree?
@@xXJLNINJAXx An AIO compared to an aircooler has some drawbacks. An high quality air cooler with good fans is almost install and forget for years to come, an AIO is much less reliable. Also, most AIO's are louder and more expensive. I have my Ryzen 5950X cooled with a BeQuiet Dark Rock pro 4 and it works perfectly fine overclocked. Even with only the middle fan installed. No AIO for me.
The Noctua cooler also comes with a 6 year warranty, and a promise of forward compatibility with future sockets. When AM5 comes out, you will very likely be able to ask Noctua to main you a new mounting kit, and typically they will send you one for free. There are still people today, who bought an NH-D14 in 2009 or something, and 10 years later they are still using the same cooler on AM4, just with a new bracket.
Gamers Nexus is the only channel I trust to recomend a product. I feel all other tech channels will try to sell you anything if the company is paying them enough.
Interesting to hear you call it a tie between the d15 and this. The d15 has better max fan speed thermals and better vrm thermals, plus an easier mounting system. Also would like to hear you guys bring warranty length into the discussion, since it was ignored completely here.
- *Beats a Noctua D15 - "Objectively average" I get that Zalman must have behaved like a real piece of shit in the past and their marketing is just a blizzard of meaningless nonsense but it outperformed every other air cooler you showed, even if by a small amount. I doubt the D15 would be characterized as "objectively average" for its performance, it's a great air cooler, and so is this according to the tests it just has a terrible mounting system.
This is genuinely impressive in terms of performance, I was not expecting that. I would say 3 things if they improve for the second version of this product, I would consider it as an air-cooler only builder. 1. The mounting system has to be improved. It needs to be easier to install the cooler. Having said that, those fan mechanisms look great! The number of times I've cut my hand installing NH-D15's will attest to that lol 2. Similar to Noctua, they need to make a smaller design in two different other sizes. If this is the large, there should be medium and small sized versions of this product. 3. That marketing department needs to get a grip and fix that entire website with clear, concise, and factual information.
Average? it's a really good air cooler. This review is more a recap of GNs problems in the past with Zalman than it is about the cooler. It's without a doubt unethical what they did, and slimy is putting it mildly. But it has nothing to do with this coolers performance. If you cant let go of that, dont review their products. Because just calling it average isn't fair. It's unprofessional
@@Rubentus- It's the best air cooler they have benchmarked. prices I've seen are also around or below 40 USD, so I dont think calling it expensive is right. Only if you compare it to liquid cooling is it unremarkable. But that is a different category
@@1dustbranch111 The Zalman is definitely a better deal if you can get it under its $99 MSRP, because then all you're really trading is a worse installment procedure, and a slightly shorter warranty, though I'm not sure if Zalman will offer future mounting support for their coolers like Noctua does. But if you do get it at the MSRP price, then it's actually pretty bad, even in this current market where things are more expensive. I've seen it hover at a newer, discounted price of $79.99 for quite a few months now. In that time span, there have also been additional stacking discounts that have sometimes put it under $70. Even though it's a big cooler and is more comparable to coolers like the Assassin III, the NH-D15, or the Dark Rock Pro 4, it'll probably draw more value comparisons to smaller coolers around the 50-70 dollar range, but you'd probably be able to push the Zalman more than those smaller coolers. Also, yeah, on the main note of your comment, I do feel like Gamers Nexus did kinda go out of their way to knock the product merely because of their experience with the company even though the product seems to perform quite well. Sometimes I even wonder if they deliberately keep it off the benchmark tables whenever they're reviewing a new cooler, since the Assassin 3 and NH-D15 frequently appear in charts but Zalman doesn't, and they basically never mention it even if it does appear in charts, but will always compare and highlight the Assassin 3 or NH-D15 instead even if they're technically not the top-performers.
So it would appear I shouldn’t switch out my Arctic 240mm for the Zalman. BTW...the pricing for the ALF II has gone up more than a few percentage points since your review. Great vid Steve.
If you geek out about cooler reviews, I don't think noctua is king any more... In cooling performance. They still have some of the best fans, but twin towers are generally all the same performance wise now. Plus or minus a degree or two. I have a D15, and it's fine. But if I had to do it over, I wouldn't shy away from a bequiet dark rock pro or a deepcool assassin...
@@Kale-Man Average for the size? Yeah, AIOs are better. But are there air coolers which are better for the size? I much prefer the large air coolers over AIOs (nh-d15 here after trying out the evga clc280).
Had an old Zalman CNPS9900A for my I-7 2600k about 10 years ago still working good. I will be upgrading my pc next week and I did get NH-D15 for I-7 10700k should of went liquid cooling 6c over fan&heatsink sounds better thanks for the review new sub cheahhh!
So it's among the best aircoolers while being a tad cheaper and your conclusion is it being 'average'. Yeah, the marketing is bs, but is your review by chance a bit colored by your past experiences with the company? ps: looks like you could mount the cooler a bit lower on the fin stack and get more vrm airflow, don't know if it would create clearance issues with ram, though, would be nice to know.
Never saw this old stuff about Zalman, but good on you for sticking to your ethics. I'll stick to companies with a good reputation, though, until companies like Zalman clean up their act and earn their redemption.
Noctua make adaptors for their fans. I mention this as it future proofs their products. In 5 or 10 years, you'll still be using your old Noctua. Its definitely worth mentioning. Many years ago, Zalman made new and interesting stuff. But the world seems to have moved on since then. Kind of said to hear all of the bad associated with them up until now. Great review, many thanks.
10:49 "The Zalman ends up about where the average is"... I believe you are viewing that chart with rage-tinted glasses, sir. Isn't it actually the 2nd best overall? Does not look at all like "the average" on that chart. Also 8:30 no mention of the fact that it is actually the best performing air cooler in this test? Am I missing something that's not on the charts?
It's fine if you want to mention Zalman's shady practices in the past, but as a reviewer, the results definitely aren't being presented without bias. Should've separated this video into a neutral performance review, and a separate video about the business practices.
Remember the error bars. When they overlap -- as they at least do in the cpu noise-normalized chart you mention -- that means "can't definitively say one or the other is better". Hence the correct description of "about the same as the other large air coolers".
Zalman being roughly 1 degree better than D15 in both 35dba and full speed, but noctua being sligthy quieter at later makes me wonder about the full cooling performance to noise graph. Being able to compare the coolers at any point, not just 35dba, would be really nice but I guess time requirement for testing would be really insane.
If you guys happen to get around to 120mm air coolers, I can say I would be interested to see what you make (objectively) of the horribly named Arctic Freezer 34 eSports Duo. Twin 120mm fans, and fairly good performance for a really good price.
A little biased Steve.... New ownership, new pr, new products, and attempting to rebuild a reputation by producing a product that is, by basically your stats, on par with the best air coolers on the market. Chill the f out and give credit and a chance.
hearing you rant about zalman and deepcool reminds me of Peter Griffin "who hurt you? who hurt you? who hurt you?" while i get and agree with the history you had with Zalman and the marketing for both companies, please don't downplay the performance by saying "it's average" it's clearly tying or slightly beating the market leaders in the TOP air cooler market. you have to realize after criticizing zalman for their marketing that your words like "it's average" is encroaching in the same territory of shady. like i said, i get you were personally hurt and zalman WAS a bad company for the consumer. this to me however is a redemption and based on your objective review by numbers, they are tied for class leading in their market and should be described using such words. don't let your subjective word cloud your objective numbers that being said, i completely agree zalman WAS a p.o.s. company and anti-consumer in their behaviour. p.s. i don't see you harsh on intel or amd nearly as much for their shady marketing and anti-consumer behaviour for years! including literally buying what's said in the media, shady court tactics to bulldoze competition etc. but that's my two cents.
@@Oguzalp97 ever hear the old saying, 'look before you leak'? you should read before you reply to avoid looking stupid. free advice, take it or leave it ;)
Going back to early 2000’s, the Zalman CNPS CPU coolers were actually some pretty decent coolers, but then there were no near the amount of much better units on the market. 7 minutes into a 2020 video and all I see so far is a roast of a company. That is a promising video, for dang sure!
I would like if companies would include RPM vs K/W charts or/and K/W vs dB or/and dB vs K/W. This would be easy to measure and also give really good informations about the overall noise vs heat performance. This is also something that you guys could do. K/W is the measurement that's decisive about performance, it describes the temperature rise per W dumped into the cooler, this number in conduction with noise in a chart would be enough to calculate the noise for a given cpu. To measure it you only need a bench power supply + load resistor and a dB meter. The fan would be controlled with a PC to read RPM and command RPM. Mount the resistor to the cold plate of the cooler, dump a known amount of power into it for example 50W. Now track the difference between ambient and cooler temperature for different RPM/Noise values. Calculate the K/W by dividing the temperature difference by the power dumped in the resistor: 10K/50W=0.2K/W This would give many different values for K/W at different noise levels. These can be ploted in a graph. This graph would than show a sweet spot for K/W vs Noise. Sometimes you have coolers that can get much louder but don't get much cooler e.g. diminishing returns. This value can also be used to calculate temperature rise for given cpu power. But i think its only a dream and no manufacturer would pull there pants down and show the real deal.
Very nice review! Thank you. I wished to see more footage of the products while in action , to take a closer look to the aesthetics and rgb, because lets face it if someone buys something different from an noctua nh15 or an arctic freezer 280, it will be because of the aesthetics!
15 years ago, Zalman was leading edge. I had a all copper cooler for socket A for my AMD Athlon. Cooled it better than any copper cooler on the market. Gave it away, in the original packaging couple years ago. Wish I could have used it on something else, but today's coolers, Especially Noctua, are so much better.
Hey Gamers Nexus, can you maybe map out the relevant processors of past (and possibly of the future) and clarify about how much performance increase in % we might be possibly able to expect from the coming new processors in gaming. And what has been in recent years the trajectory in % by how much in average the performance gets better. It would cut through all the hype around new stuff. Thanks!🦾
My only problem was your odd complaint about the noctua cooler fan mount. It is a wire that for me strongly latches onto the fan and is so hard to see that I didnt even notice it at first. It is so clean and simple I cant believe anybody could call it not good.
The noctua clip bothers me a little each time I have to mount it since I go OCD with it..... counting fins to ensure the fan is perfectly straight and trying to finagle the clip into the right place. I'm impressed by the simplicity of Zalman's fan mount. Their motherboard mount reminds me of what cheap coolers used 10 years ago.
Well, I can't wait to get a rad for my next computer in 2 years :P but went all middle class this time, which means air cool but wanted a really quiet fan. Noctua seems to dominate that space so maybe I am just too happy with what I got to think about the clip.
I've wondered what happened to Zalman, they used to make such good air coolers and were the dominant brand back in the mid-2000s. When Intel was making CPUs that ran incredibly hot, the top of the line Zalman was the only air cooler I could find that could actually keep one of my PCs running at a safe temp. Sad to hear what later, but I hope the people currently running the company are legitimately trying to restore it to the way it was when they made great products.
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Written article version of this review (though we'd prefer you watch!): www.gamersnexus.net/hwreviews/3573-zalman-cnps20x-cpu-cooler-review-benchmark-vs-noctua-nh-d15-others
Watch our Liquid Freezer II review: ruclips.net/video/KPaSEGe6ML0/видео.html
Can you review scythe ninja air 5?
Could you do a review on the Scythe Coolers? Also Zalman S2 is a wind tunnel
Could pleas we start getting standardized testing on the air coolers with a specific fan to isolate the cooler from the included fans?
@@DarkZenith No, because no one really does that, and for those who do, it's going to be so fan-dependent that it doesn't make any sense. You're basically asking for a fan benchmark.
In fairness, Zalman aren't really claiming a "20 times increase in cooling performance" (although it APPEARS that way because of the translation). They're saying the "Dual heat transfer design of 20X..." [referencing the model #] "...increase..." [bad translation; should be "increases"] "...the cooling performance" [they don't actually say how MUCH].
Nonetheless, they really should word that differently.
Cooler Manufacturers: 6 heat pipes!
Zalman: Anti-coagulated hyperfluid quantum heat pipes with inter-dimensional vortex fans!
Just open a portal to Hell and send them the heat, they wouldn't mind, I'm sure! 😈🤣
+1 to temperature regulator
They learned their marketing from the steam trailer for Battleblock Theater.
Oh yeah? Well with my heatpipes, I reversed the polarity!
Reversing the polarity solves everything, everytime.
I want a air cooler that breaks the laws of physics and spacetime.
It cools before the heat existed.
Isn't that for what RGB is for? More RGB more better! (not)
@@TitaniumXplatinum Good old ThermalExpansion and BigReactors. :D
@Calvin Schuster That's as plausible as dark matter existing ! ;p
super easy, barely an inconvenience.
The most grudging positive review ever by GN.
Yeah you can tell that Steve absolutely did not like having to say that the product is on par performance wise with the beloved NHD15.
@@Zetharion1 at least most of us still know that Noctua has a great relationship with its customers which after sale support, long warranties and replacement parts. That for me is a huge reason why all my case fans and cpu cooler are all Noctua parts
@@darkmarc by up to 3 degrees, potentially. Margin of error goes both ways (+-n°) both ways (Noctua unit and Zalman unit) - so if the margin of error on a single test is +-1°, then comparing two test results would have a potential deviation of +-2°.
Yeah man, it looked very personal. Generally I like these guys but that wasn't good.
@@matts3690 I'd rather go for Arctic fans, they are generally ~4 to 5 times cheaper for arguably the same performance.
I’ll always have fond memories of zalman’s flower style coolers and thermaltake’s golden orb. Some of the best, most prolific coolers back in their days.
My dad's Zalman flower cooler disintegrated into black powder. I have no idea what the heck my dad has been doing with his PC over the last 15 years.
Ha, i owned on of those!
My memories of zalman flower coolers involve lots of blood.
I had one of those as well. Even had one for my Geforce 7900GT if I remember the name correctly.
They were damn good coolers back in the day! I have one of my old builds in the corner with one of those bad boys in it.
Zalman: *makes an actually decent cooler*
also Zalman: *makes it look like crap by adding quastionable marketing*
yeah, like, I love those fan clips, but they need to give their marketing person a sedative
@@pixelsbyprince But doesn't that fan mount restrict you from using your choice of fans?
@@zarmaanful i don't know, I'm wondering if you could take the fan bracket and put it on a noctua fan.
@@flagovhate +1. I am curious about that too.
@@zarmaanful It does. They often make coolers with "special" design. Then you can only get a replacement fan from them. Rather than just strapping anything to it.
Noctua : 5 years of engineering to have perfect blades and shroud to speed up air and reduce vibrations.
Zalman : Spider legs.
I wouldn't put Noctua as the reference point. Maybe in case of fans they actually do some work, but for their heat sinks design and finish it is a different matter. Their heat sinks are very straight forward - fins out of aluminum, with massive width and product weight to ensure thermal capability. Other manufacturers already moved long time ago to differently shaping the fins producing better heat dissipation, but those guys are stuck in 2010. Furthermore they have poor quality for their products. One of the heat pipes on D15s is too short (at least 2cm) and it not making contact with fins at the top. The base of the heat sinks have very rough contact area. You can see cutting marks left in the copper under nickle plating. It was terrible on D14 and they only slightly improved in D15.
@@gagarin777 Okay, but that begs the question, then what should the reference point be for large air coolers? I'd also point out that "stuck in 2010", well, yeah but the NH-D15 came out in 2014. :) So now a couple of companies have finally pulled even with Noctua. 6 years later. So, if Noctua did it 6 years ago, and are still within margin of error of products that came out in the last couple months how could they not be the reference point? What cooler should be and why?
@@gagarin777 I think you are exaggerating a bit. No way the heatpipes are two centimeter too short and I haven't seen the other flaws you are talking about it person or on pictures either but there is no denying that the fans are the important part of the Noctua coolers. I have to admit I would like to see someone swapping the fans with a different cooler and comparing how the coolers and fans compare.
And it was Zalman of all these companies.
in the late 90's and 00's they used to make really top coolers, but then got beaten by so many other companies.
@@MooKyTig I didn't say anything about them (or anyone) using it as reference point for the cooling and thermals in tests. I was reffering to design and finish quality.
Breaking news: tech Jesus give a company a chance to redeem themselves
Sin no more.
His justice is only comparable to his mercy.
@@CaveyMoth Moth no more.
He did it before with cooler master
Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.
Objectively: Average, Decent airflow
Subjectively: Much fins, So many dimensions
wow
My guess is they have some arty farty types in their marketing team
@@TheFazz01 i would have said more like an entp who thinks buzz words equal money
@@knifeyonline More like some dude got paid a few hundred bucks to do it for them and they went with what had a fancy ring to it ;)
wait zalman still around? i had one of those back in back in like 2004 or something
They made genuinely good "flower" coolers back then! We have several on our 'old stuff' shelf.
Okay boomer
@@WayStedYou Okay Bloomer*
@@GamersNexus Yeah, I had a CNPS9900 Max (on an i5-2500k iirc) back in the day and it seemed to do decently.
i had the full copper one .. worked great :)
I need to see you review the FUMA 2 from Scythe, I own 3 of them, but don't have the means to thermal test like this. Please do a Fuma 2 review/analysis. Thanks!
I have one installed on my Ryzen 3900X workstation and it works great!
Ditto. The Scythe Fuma 2 is in dire need of a review from you guys. I would definitely love to hear y'alls take on it.
SAME AS NOCTUA NH-U12A apparently: www.techpowerup.com/review/scythe-fuma-2-dual-tower-cpu-cooler/8.html
Must be CAREFUL with cooler reviews as I read this thinking it matched the NH-D15 as the performance graph suggested that and I thought the fan noise was identical, but on closer reading (including the summary) I realized that wasn't the case. The NH-D15 is slightly better though also more expensive so it's arguably overkill for most people. The NH-D14 for example keeps my R9-3900x quiet but perhaps an Intel i9 should have the best air cooler (or liquid cooler) money can buy. The only big issue with CPU coolers is when you hit their maximum cooling potential at which point things can heat up very quickly... if you're under that such as an R7-3700x something like a FUMA 2 is probably going to give you very similar noise to an NH-D15. Noisier, but by such a small degree it's probably hard to justify the cost difference.
Or it's more affordable little brother the Mugen5. I suspect once GN has a solid baseline of $90 big towers established we'll see the $40-$60 range popping in soon.
applemaggot The Mugen 5 is finally going to be in stock on Amazon for MSRP soon too. I’m debating ordering one even though I technically don’t need it. I’m still waiting for my Ninja 5 to be delivered and any new computers I’m look at building won’t support these taller air coolers, but dang it the Mugen 5 is a solid choice for a midrange cooler.
So when are you going to do some more budget focused coolers? IMO, the most valuable info is how much better these big coolers are than your hyper 212s and wraith prisms. I think a serperate piece detailing "baseline" coolers would be pretty nice.
Working toward it.
@@GamersNexus i had a macho REV B and my CPu was allways the coolest part and quite silent .. now i ask myself how much better are these bigger air coolers that cost more than twice as much
@@DrSmugface Not worth the extra money, usually. Just check other reviews for your cooler vs them, while it's not from GN it's accurate enough.
@@Electric_Doodie That depends on what you are doing with the CPU. If it runs @stock frequency then it doesn't matter much which cooler you have. Although lately increase of the cpu's cores and power consumption went up quite a lot (hence the increase in AIO cooling products on the market). But if you plan on doing some overclocking, then you have to be prepared to pay more for the cooler to have this slightly bigger headroom.
@@GamersNexus OMG Yes ! That would be so awesome! Some of those basic coolers all in the price range of 30bucks !
be quiet! Pure Rock
Arctic Freezer 34
Alpenföhn Ben Nevis Advanced
Scythe Kotetsu Mark II
Hyper 212
That would be awesome! You are the only guys I trust with this topic !
Without even watching this review, but just looking at the product, I can already tell that it suffers from the very reason which chased me (and many others) away from Zalman products so many years ago. I'd say, since the old radial cooler days. The issue is the fan. It's proprietary, and unique. You can't simply put whatever fan you want to. Instead, you're forced to use one of their noisy non-repairable pieces of garbage. It's such a shame that they haven't learned. Especially, since the passive portion of their coolers is usually pretty decent. Unfortunately, their short-sighted greed in trying to force you into using their terrible proprietary fans is what is keeping the smarter consumers far away... Far far away from every product which bears their brand. Only suckers buy their products, and usually only once. Not exactly the smartest marketing decision. Made even more unthinkable, given the fact that the industry is bloated with competitiors who design their products to be more standardized, interchable, swappable, and user-repairable. Sorry to see that they've still got their heads planted firmly up their rear ends. Something tells me that they'll continue to survive doing business the only way they know how... By playing dirty. BTW, if you think the fans are noisy now, give it a few months to collect dust and break-in a bit. You'll see perfectly well why people wind up hating them.
Great point on the fan being difficult to replace. The other brackets don't fit, so I should have noted that replacements wouldn't be that easy. Will try to keep a better eye on maintainability of coolers going forward.
in case you never knew, fans don't really break. (except if you physically break them apart).
you just put new lubricant in the bearings and those fans you thought "broke" will start working again.
@@hitler69
What OP means is that their fans are really bad quality. They start getting very noisy after a few months. Doing any kind of maintenance on fans that are less than a year old is unacceptable.
My noctua cooler has been running 24/7 for 7 years in my NAS with the original fans and it is still perfectly fine without any kind of maintenance (except the once a year dusting). Same thing with my 212 evo that has been running for around 4 years.
@@hitler69 Fans actually do break. We've had a lot break over the years. The blades can sometimes explode off the fan, depending on how poorly it was manufactured.
@@GamersNexus Longevity is always a great aspect to keep an eye on. So yeah, as much info on maintainability and replaceability as possible is greatly appreciated!
Oooof those first few minutes are
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
It's always 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
when "this video is brought to you by us"
And I love the video for it
Bro, I always love coming back to the spicy reviews like this to catch some of Steve's professional sass. That "8 dimensional" bit and the way they pick apart the stupid marketing . . . perfect.
Zalman: Beats the best air coolers on the market.
GN: It's ok
Mageleader Gaming Except it’s louder and only just one degree cooler. No thanks.
@@georgemorley1029 barely louder and barely cooler.. so arguably the same... set ur fan profile and forget it performance was almost identical and i run a d15
It's always funny see GN reviews, because even if the product is awesome the best you can get from him is a "Ok" or "slit above average" 😁
A bit late to the party but it kinda annoyed me that Steve seemed a bit biased in this review.
Yeah Zalman is shady, but since NH-D15 is basically the king of air coolers and that cooler beats it, even if it's by just 1 degree (It might be within margin of error but I don't suspect Steve ran the tests once to get his results) while not being terribly noisy either, and then labeling the cooler as "average" was disappointing to hear from someone I generally trust with reviewing products fairly.
@@gonzomiller1720 He's always like this, this is most definitely a positive review, it's just kinda his personality and how he does his reviews
'4D stereoscopic corrugated cooling fin aluminum heatsink' means it's for smart bois only.
Which explains the overcomplicated mounting
smort
actually it means its for the simplest idiots, because anyone smart enough will write this product off as bullcrap regardless of performance
BIG BRAIN ONLY
@@aamgdp I think he was being sarcastic, but I kinda broke my sarcasm-o-meter when I first used the Internet, so I can't tell for sure
Sorry Steve but I noticed an incorrect quote, zalman aren’t claiming a 20x performance increase, it’s merely saying it’s optimised for “20X’s” (CNPS “20X”) heatpipe and heat fin design.
4:11 is the timestamp for that. It's indeed just about the "20X" product, and unspecified "increase [to] the cooling performance".
Good catch.
Despite the jargon they spewed I'm actually impressed with the cooling.
When the engineers who design the product are honest workers but the managers and advertising department are shameless liars.
long story short:
- Price:
Zalman +
Noctua -
Deepcool -
- Mounting:
Zalman - (loose screws)
Noctua +
Deepcool +
- Fan compatibility
Zalman - -
Noctua +
Deepcool +
- RGB:
Zalman + +
Noctua -
Deepcool -
- Cooling Performance:
Zalman +
Noctua +
Deepcool +
- other:
Zalman - warranty 1 year
Noctua - 6 Years + Socket compatibility in future (socket upgrade KIT for free)
Deepcool warranty ?!
choose you cooling weapon ! ;)
I like the Noctua aesthetic.
@@deejeh9494 that's why i dont want to score the aestethic ;)
@@TechTalkTobi thanks for the summary
@@deejeh9494 same, i have a 200mm noctua, the noctua NHD15 and another 140mm exhaust fan ;)
Fan compatibility Zalman+ - i use it with 14" Noctua single fan.
Woah, that's a great review for the Arctic Liquid Freezer II
That backplate and mounting hardware looks just like the ones used on Thermalright's air coolers. Particularly their 'Macho' line. I bet they are made by the same company.
Same mounting as the Arctic Freezer esports 34 as well
Yeah, Alpenföhn, Enermax and if I am not mistaken Scythe use similar systems. I wouldn't call it convoluted, just "average". We are just all spoilt by Noctua.
@@catriona_drummond Scythe does not use the same hardware (for AM4 at least). Uses the stock backplate and it's a total of 6 screws.
@@BigChungusRedditElite Yeah, I had to hunt down my AMD stock backplate when I upgraded to a Scythe, don't throw anything away! There was an Intel specific backplate though and the not too uncommon but helpful long screwdriver. This was in the $45 Mugen 5 kit.
@@flippa4220 No it's not. Arctic freezer 34 uses the standard am4 backplate, with standoffs, mount and 4 screws.
Back in the day, Zalman had some of the most epic air coolers. Gigantic cooper beasts, actually I saw a pic of one I used to have, they probably still make it. They were my go to before the Hyper 212. Of course I haven’t used an air cooler on my personal build in over 10 years.
Oh shit, the reserator! There was a pic of that too lol
My buddy still has one, it’s probably 15 years old
I bought a CNPS9900 MAX with a blue led just because it looked cool, holy shit is such an epic cooler. I wish more cpu coolers looked this interesting nowadays
Would go noctua again any day, running the NH-D15 for some years in my main desktop its silent and effective, and if there is any new socket in future you get a mount kit for free.
M. K. Just bought a NH-D15 last week. Didn’t know you get a mounting kit free
@@AllMacDaily They give the AM4 mounting kit for free even for the NH-D14, you just have to show buying proof of both the cooler and the Ryzen CPU.
Same nh d15 se over year best spend money so happy with it i fit it in 160mm case both fans without touch glas,while the min must be 165mm
Oh lordy, this is hilarious. Stereoscopic-ally hilarious, in additional dimensions.
zalman: say no more fam
stereo scopic 4D ? they go back in time to when your CPU was colder? "its not an abstract measurement its just time"
It just means it's VR ready.
@@CaveyMoth VR has time manipulation which requires a specific CPU cooler > wow technology boggles the mind, A CPU cooler that can alter space time, wow
My company was Zalman's agency in China several years ago, and I heard that they was close down for a long long time...So...
The quality and transparency of what you all do is why this is the only channel I trust and get my information from when I'm purchasing new hardware. Thank you.
GN: besides installation process, this cooler has very marginally beat or matched the NH-D15 (widely considered to be the current best air cooler).
also GN: it's only average.
They're within error bars of each other, amid performance equivalency, the next factors to consider include warranty, reputation, service, price, ease of installation, maintenance, and others. The performance increase is not statistically significant from the other leading air coolers. They have produced another leading air cooler to join the pack, nothing more and nothing less.
Well, it's technically true that (in that price bracket) it's "the best", but also "average" (all of them are, because they're basically the same). "Average" doesn't mean "mediocre", just that it's the average of some number of data points.
Average for big air coolers, yes. It's the average performance of all the big air coolers. Please understand that we are speaking of arithmetic average, not of normal lexical use of "average."
I remember when CPU coolers used to suck. Even stock CPU coolers are decent nowadays.
Thanks for this review. Zalman was the first cooler I bought when I built my first PC. Think it was an AMD 3000+ socket 939. So the name Zalman is really nostalgic to me and hearing about their new products got me excited. Didn't know about their history though and I thought they just disappeared because those coolers weren't good in today's standard. Been wanting another air cooler to replace my custom loop (tired of the maintenance of it) so I might just grab this cooler.
I need to see a Rick and Morty episode where they use a cooler as a weapon against higher dimensional beings. Using the same verbiage in the marketing to describe it.
Zalman collapsed a quantum tesseract to make this cooler.
Installing my NH-D15 was so easy I honestly thought I did it wrong.
What about the Dark Rock Pro 4? All the reviews on that I've ever seen say it's more or less a tie with the NHD15, I'd love to see your better testing methodology actually sort out if one's quieter or more capable of cooling.
Personally, I am happy to see Zalman back in the game. I like the looks and if I were building my first rig today I would probably consider this one over Noctua.
When a review for a Zalman cooler really becomes a reason to buy the Arctic Freezer II
average arctic gigachad
Steve I love your comparison videos of coolers. You go down to the nitty gritty, and show that there are differences between products competing in the same lineup, even if those differences are small.
Nice performer, I'm rly happy for them, BUT!!
It breaks a very important feature of the air coolers.. Maintenance!!
They should stop using custom fan designs, we can't replace/upgrade them that easy. Zalman always did that :/
finally! a video from you guys less than half an hour. :) good job do i knew I could find the comparison i was looking for only with your team.
Do we seriously need to spend half the video discussing a company's parent company's past. If it cools better than a different cooler, then its better. If it doesnt, then its not. Also, its like half the price of most of the others reviewed against
The product is okay, which is actually a huge improvement over their previous products.
My two previous cpu coolers were Zalman, they were great. There website is rubbish though.
@@sensibledriver933 then you didnt had much CPU coolers
Dr Smugface *don’t have many
@@yiepie9822 For someone trying to correct someone else its amusing you got it wrong too. 'Didn't have many.'*
@@DrSmugface Both previous were stock coolers so probably not great. The Zalman's were quieter and cooler for only a few quid.
Around 6 minutes I had to have a break cause my ipad was overheating from all the fire
Undisclosed Music lol my brain hurts.
My samsung handled it fine bit it's always on fire.
Sounds like the kind of company I'd like to buy an air cooler from (?)
everytime i think of going back to AIOs i hear that barrel roll click of 1month-3year Russian roulette I went through as a system builder from 2013-2018 before i swore them off...
but yeah sticking with Noctua.
@@anasevi9456 Hi, not all AiO are bad. You just have to be lucky to have one with a good pump and being able to easily change the liquid. I have a Be Quiet Silent Loop 280 since early 2017 without problems. I just change the liquid with EKWB EK-CryoFuel Clear and remove the air bubbles once a year that's it!!! Always Keep the pump at fix factory default speed never change the pump speed. Never mix metals and and always use some type of antibacterial if you make your own fluid. With the Silent Loop 280 I can do full maintenance of the pump and rad which may not be the case of other AiO products on the market.
@@boblee5524 I thought AIOs weren't meant to be opened. I saw an AIO once and it didn't offer any convenient way of disassembly
I've been looking forward to your testing of this cooler since another high-profile site tested it and claimed something like a 4 degree advantage over the similar-sized Noctua unit (also claiming parity with liquid AIO's). Not surprised, but still disappointed, that this cooler doesn't live up to those claims. Thanks for your quality testing!
The wording of the ads, specs, and so forth is par for the course here in Korea. It's all about buzz words that sound smart or techincally advanced in English. The marketing materials are typically done up by a staff member with a limit amount of English skill, such as someone who spent a year studying English abroad while in university but never gaining a strong proficiency. This is something us native English speakers have just had to get used to since it is also an issue whenever shopping on online markets here, like Gmarket.
My old Zalman Z9 Plus was a solid case, and came with some of the quietest fans I've EVER had, despite being cheap. It's still in use by a friend now. Sad to see what went wrong with their company
It's sad to see a company fall so far, but I'm hoping this is the start of a decent redemption arc. Zalman was the first cooler I ever used so I'm hoping they can stay on the ethical side this time around.
Love the cpu cooler videos! Please do one of the Arctic 34 eSports Duo-it sounds (and looks) like a meme but it has tested really well with other reviewers. But I want to see what the best most thorough reviewer (eg you) has to say about it.
Quite obvious Steve is still salty with Zalman's past.
I am surprised that Steve did not complain about the RAM clearance issue with this cooler and that he did not experience any more issues with noise levels. When the Swedish site Sweclockers tested this cooler it was really loud under load, it was to the point they went out and bought a second unit for testing too see if something was wrong since other reviewers had not reported the issue but the second one was just as bad. So this is now confusing to me... 😮
"Also known as Nickel-plated cold plates"
Your bluntness is always fantastic.
Wow I thought Zalman is done at this point. I still have my 20 year old CNPS 6000-Cu which is a thing of beauty... I'm glad they are back with a decent product again, I just hope their marketing team can keep up with their engineering team. Oh and Steve - great video again! (As usual)
Hey Steve, nice rant!
Oh, was it supposed to be a cooler review? I didn't notice.
It sux what happened to Zalman. Through the late '90s and early to mid 2000s, they made good products. CNPS9700cu, and CNPS7000cu were among the best at the time. I still have a CNPS 14x in a Core i7 4th gen PC running to this day.
Hey can you guys do some cheap air cooler reviews/roundup ? Really interested to see if Arctic does as well there as it does in CLCs
Arctic just makes good stuff in general
@@hyperstimmed Their fans are cheap but relieable and silent. For the price, you can't go wrong. Best part, no RGB!
For price/performance go for thermalright
Thank you for doing this review, I have been looking forward to your opinion about it. Also thank you for informing your viewers about Zalman's past shadiness, I was not aware of that.
I'd love to see a review of the Noctua NH-U12A (does it really match the 14's?)
I'd love Noctua U12A vs Scythe Fuma 2 comparison!
@@tockar hmm.. it looks like the Fuma 2 would equal the U12A's performance and acoustics for about 2/3 the cost. Until GN reviews them it's hard to know for sure though.
I too would like to see the NH-U12A get some time on the bench.
...100% because I already own one and want to see where it stacks up. 😅
I'd think the NH-U12A would be the go to for Lian Li Dynamic 011 users wanting air since that case can't fit some of the taller big boy coolers.
I went with a $70 cooler (AliExpress) with 230 TDP capacity for my needs. Dual fan, RGB fans with an RGB top plate, 4pin PWM, shrouded, 6-nickel-plated heat pipes: RCCooler GI-D66A. Was surprised at the build quality versus a CoolerMaster H412S that it replaced. Benchmarked against top brands, it was surprisingly performant.
For a "display" bench PC, that runs a venerable XEON E5-1650V2 overclocked to 4.5Ghz, I have a single 120mm fan SNOWMAN 6 pipe RGB air cooler. That one costs a whopping $28. Again, blows away the H412S in terms of cooling. Build quality is on par with the CoolerMaster.
Both coolers are reasonably quiet.
PS: The PCCooler GI-R68X is the higher capacity/TDP upgrade to the GI-D66A, with its 8mm nickel plated heat pipes as opposed to 6mm, but it is also $124. Not necessary for my use case.
Wondering when the Hyper 212 will be on there for reference... then again, 200 watts...
Legendary cooler
I like the Zalman coolers of the past. My first was the 9500 (figure 8) used on my socket 939 Amd fx60 and still attached to it. My second cooler was 9900 Max all copper air cooler (figure 8 style again) on my Sandy 2600k. (Still using 9+ years) I liked them for design and moving air 360 degrees around motherboard. I hope they can get things going great in the future of CPU air. Thanks Steve for the interesting history and issues with Zalman's current CNPS20x.
Interesting. Would like to see a review of the Scythe Fuma 2. It's another "big air cooler" but only runs $60.
ruclips.net/video/qntVQmLHDhI/видео.html
I am glad you did this review and explained the issues that can happen. Thank You.
The last time I heard "biomimetic" was on Star Trek, when their gel packs died.
Did Neelix give them a bacterial infection from some of his dodgy Talaxian cheese.
I will forever love this channel for it's honesty. Thank you.
My 31 year old brain feeling ashamed, when it remembers that 10-15 years ago he thought Zalman was the best out there :D :D oh boy....
at some point zalman was actually among the best... golden orb days. 20 years ago or something.
@@lort6022 YES! I had a dual athlon rig with Zalman coolers.
Sad to see where they ended up. This looks like a decent tower cooler. All they had to do was market it as such with no bombastic marketing and they would have had a win.
Now, we just point and laugh at their four dimensional bio mimetic bullshit.
Steve just reems into them. Gordon Ramsey minus the cursing. 10/10 my favorite reviewer. Hope your 2020 didn't suck @the whole crew at Gamers Nexus.
Impressive performance against the D15. Give the new team a chance.
Yeah, it beats or equals the best air cooler out there. To call it just an averege cooler is just plain unfair. It's actually a spectaculair result and one I didn't expect at all. Having critique on past practices, the marketing and the mounting system is fair tho.
@@Carrinthe Yeah, this is a reviewer holding grudges. Really expected more from GN. It's matching the Noctua, a very well praised cooler, and suddenly that's just average? So what's Noctua then? Below average?
They have to axe the marketing team now, needs more restructuring
@@Carrinthe is it really that impressive if it doesn't last worth shit? If performance is all it takes then why not just get the cheapest AIO that beats out the noctua by 1 degree?
@@xXJLNINJAXx An AIO compared to an aircooler has some drawbacks. An high quality air cooler with good fans is almost install and forget for years to come, an AIO is much less reliable. Also, most AIO's are louder and more expensive. I have my Ryzen 5950X cooled with a BeQuiet Dark Rock pro 4 and it works perfectly fine overclocked. Even with only the middle fan installed. No AIO for me.
The Noctua cooler also comes with a 6 year warranty, and a promise of forward compatibility with future sockets. When AM5 comes out, you will very likely be able to ask Noctua to main you a new mounting kit, and typically they will send you one for free. There are still people today, who bought an NH-D14 in 2009 or something, and 10 years later they are still using the same cooler on AM4, just with a new bracket.
Gamers Nexus is the only channel I trust to recomend a product. I feel all other tech channels will try to sell you anything if the company is paying them enough.
I love Steve's low key flame. That 4D Stereoscopic to 8D bit was hilarious as was his rare loss of words during a scripted segment!
are you going to test bequiet dark rock pro 4?
Interesting to hear you call it a tie between the d15 and this. The d15 has better max fan speed thermals and better vrm thermals, plus an easier mounting system.
Also would like to hear you guys bring warranty length into the discussion, since it was ignored completely here.
- *Beats a Noctua D15
- "Objectively average"
I get that Zalman must have behaved like a real piece of shit in the past and their marketing is just a blizzard of meaningless nonsense but it outperformed every other air cooler you showed, even if by a small amount. I doubt the D15 would be characterized as "objectively average" for its performance, it's a great air cooler, and so is this according to the tests it just has a terrible mounting system.
This is genuinely impressive in terms of performance, I was not expecting that. I would say 3 things if they improve for the second version of this product, I would consider it as an air-cooler only builder.
1. The mounting system has to be improved. It needs to be easier to install the cooler. Having said that, those fan mechanisms look great! The number of times I've cut my hand installing NH-D15's will attest to that lol
2. Similar to Noctua, they need to make a smaller design in two different other sizes. If this is the large, there should be medium and small sized versions of this product.
3. That marketing department needs to get a grip and fix that entire website with clear, concise, and factual information.
You can get NH u12a if size is your concern, albeit more expensive since they use their new fan on it.
Average? it's a really good air cooler. This review is more a recap of GNs problems in the past with Zalman than it is about the cooler. It's without a doubt unethical what they did, and slimy is putting it mildly.
But it has nothing to do with this coolers performance. If you cant let go of that, dont review their products. Because just calling it average isn't fair. It's unprofessional
@@Rubentus- It's the best air cooler they have benchmarked. prices I've seen are also around or below 40 USD, so I dont think calling it expensive is right.
Only if you compare it to liquid cooling is it unremarkable. But that is a different category
Unprofessional is what GN is a lot of the time, honestly. They have their own biases and take pot shots constantly.
@@channelthechannel I dont know about other times. I Rather like GN. But this time I am upsetti over the video
@@1dustbranch111 It's over $88 on Amazon in the Far East (whereas the Fuma 2 is under $50).
@@1dustbranch111 The Zalman is definitely a better deal if you can get it under its $99 MSRP, because then all you're really trading is a worse installment procedure, and a slightly shorter warranty, though I'm not sure if Zalman will offer future mounting support for their coolers like Noctua does. But if you do get it at the MSRP price, then it's actually pretty bad, even in this current market where things are more expensive.
I've seen it hover at a newer, discounted price of $79.99 for quite a few months now. In that time span, there have also been additional stacking discounts that have sometimes put it under $70. Even though it's a big cooler and is more comparable to coolers like the Assassin III, the NH-D15, or the Dark Rock Pro 4, it'll probably draw more value comparisons to smaller coolers around the 50-70 dollar range, but you'd probably be able to push the Zalman more than those smaller coolers.
Also, yeah, on the main note of your comment, I do feel like Gamers Nexus did kinda go out of their way to knock the product merely because of their experience with the company even though the product seems to perform quite well. Sometimes I even wonder if they deliberately keep it off the benchmark tables whenever they're reviewing a new cooler, since the Assassin 3 and NH-D15 frequently appear in charts but Zalman doesn't, and they basically never mention it even if it does appear in charts, but will always compare and highlight the Assassin 3 or NH-D15 instead even if they're technically not the top-performers.
So it would appear I shouldn’t switch out my Arctic 240mm for the Zalman. BTW...the pricing for the ALF II has gone up more than a few percentage points since your review. Great vid Steve.
The NH-D15 is considered to be the best air cooler, how is matching it's performance average?
luuzeri because all the coolers used are fat double tower dual fan set ups. Of course they perform well, but it’s average (for the size)
If you geek out about cooler reviews, I don't think noctua is king any more... In cooling performance. They still have some of the best fans, but twin towers are generally all the same performance wise now. Plus or minus a degree or two. I have a D15, and it's fine. But if I had to do it over, I wouldn't shy away from a bequiet dark rock pro or a deepcool assassin...
@@Cal94 But are they significantly better? It's all about the local pricing. I think having another competitive large air cooler is a big deal.
@@Kale-Man Average for the size? Yeah, AIOs are better. But are there air coolers which are better for the size? I much prefer the large air coolers over AIOs (nh-d15 here after trying out the evga clc280).
@@ianchristie9658 Honestly for how objective GN tries to portray themselves they really aren't occasionally.
Had an old Zalman CNPS9900A for my I-7 2600k about 10 years ago still working good. I will be upgrading my pc next week and I did get NH-D15 for I-7 10700k should of went liquid cooling 6c over fan&heatsink sounds better thanks for the review new sub cheahhh!
So it's among the best aircoolers while being a tad cheaper and your conclusion is it being 'average'. Yeah, the marketing is bs, but is your review by chance a bit colored by your past experiences with the company?
ps: looks like you could mount the cooler a bit lower on the fin stack and get more vrm airflow, don't know if it would create clearance issues with ram, though, would be nice to know.
That's just how he does his reviews tbh, he is never that positive, and that is something I really like about him.
Never saw this old stuff about Zalman, but good on you for sticking to your ethics. I'll stick to companies with a good reputation, though, until companies like Zalman clean up their act and earn their redemption.
4:15 made me laugh so hard
I don’t know why but it did
@@NormalFerrari Next cooler Zalman will release will break the laws of quantum physics lol
Noctua make adaptors for their fans. I mention this as it future proofs their products. In 5 or 10 years, you'll still be using your old Noctua. Its definitely worth mentioning.
Many years ago, Zalman made new and interesting stuff. But the world seems to have moved on since then. Kind of said to hear all of the bad associated with them up until now.
Great review, many thanks.
Where i live this thing i more than double the price of the NH-D15 😂
i really love how you have like little bookmarks fort different parts on your video. I wish more people did that
10:49 "The Zalman ends up about where the average is"... I believe you are viewing that chart with rage-tinted glasses, sir. Isn't it actually the 2nd best overall? Does not look at all like "the average" on that chart. Also 8:30 no mention of the fact that it is actually the best performing air cooler in this test? Am I missing something that's not on the charts?
It's fine if you want to mention Zalman's shady practices in the past, but as a reviewer, the results definitely aren't being presented without bias. Should've separated this video into a neutral performance review, and a separate video about the business practices.
Remember the error bars. When they overlap -- as they at least do in the cpu noise-normalized chart you mention -- that means "can't definitively say one or the other is better". Hence the correct description of "about the same as the other large air coolers".
Zalman being roughly 1 degree better than D15 in both 35dba and full speed, but noctua being sligthy quieter at later makes me wonder about the full cooling performance to noise graph. Being able to compare the coolers at any point, not just 35dba, would be really nice but I guess time requirement for testing would be really insane.
The marketing stuff made you speechless with how they broke the law of physics
If you guys happen to get around to 120mm air coolers, I can say I would be interested to see what you make (objectively) of the horribly named Arctic Freezer 34 eSports Duo.
Twin 120mm fans, and fairly good performance for a really good price.
A little biased Steve.... New ownership, new pr, new products, and attempting to rebuild a reputation by producing a product that is, by basically your stats, on par with the best air coolers on the market. Chill the f out and give credit and a chance.
Why do manufacturers remove the shroud/duct on fans? The duct limits the vortexes on the tip of the fan blade an increases efficiency like a winglet.
hearing you rant about zalman and deepcool reminds me of Peter Griffin "who hurt you? who hurt you? who hurt you?"
while i get and agree with the history you had with Zalman and the marketing for both companies, please don't downplay the performance by saying "it's average" it's clearly tying or slightly beating the market leaders in the TOP air cooler market. you have to realize after criticizing zalman for their marketing that your words like "it's average" is encroaching in the same territory of shady.
like i said, i get you were personally hurt and zalman WAS a bad company for the consumer. this to me however is a redemption and based on your objective review by numbers, they are tied for class leading in their market and should be described using such words. don't let your subjective word cloud your objective numbers
that being said, i completely agree zalman WAS a p.o.s. company and anti-consumer in their behaviour.
p.s. i don't see you harsh on intel or amd nearly as much for their shady marketing and anti-consumer behaviour for years! including literally buying what's said in the media, shady court tactics to bulldoze competition etc. but that's my two cents.
He clearly spelled out what he means by average. I don't see the problem.
@@Oguzalp97 ever hear the old saying, 'look before you leak'? you should read before you reply to avoid looking stupid. free advice, take it or leave it ;)
I have a CNPS10X EXTREME, and it works fine until today! Love it!
Going back to early 2000’s, the Zalman CNPS CPU coolers were actually some pretty decent coolers, but then there were no near the amount of much better units on the market.
7 minutes into a 2020 video and all I see so far is a roast of a company. That is a promising video, for dang sure!
Ayyeee I've been waiting to see this review for a while no one does a cooler test like GN does and I've heard some crazy things about this cooler
I would like if companies would include RPM vs K/W charts or/and K/W vs dB or/and dB vs K/W.
This would be easy to measure and also give really good informations about the overall noise vs heat performance.
This is also something that you guys could do.
K/W is the measurement that's decisive about performance, it describes the temperature rise per W dumped into the cooler, this number in conduction with noise in a chart would be enough to calculate the noise for a given cpu.
To measure it you only need a bench power supply + load resistor and a dB meter. The fan would be controlled with a PC to read RPM and command RPM.
Mount the resistor to the cold plate of the cooler, dump a known amount of power into it for example 50W.
Now track the difference between ambient and cooler temperature for different RPM/Noise values.
Calculate the K/W by dividing the temperature difference by the power dumped in the resistor:
10K/50W=0.2K/W
This would give many different values for K/W at different noise levels. These can be ploted in a graph. This graph would than show a sweet spot for K/W vs Noise. Sometimes you have coolers that can get much louder but don't get much cooler e.g. diminishing returns.
This value can also be used to calculate temperature rise for given cpu power.
But i think its only a dream and no manufacturer would pull there pants down and show the real deal.
Very nice review! Thank you.
I wished to see more footage of the products while in action , to take a closer look to the aesthetics and rgb, because lets face it if someone buys something different from an noctua nh15 or an arctic freezer 280, it will be because of the aesthetics!
15 years ago, Zalman was leading edge. I had a all copper cooler for socket A for my AMD Athlon. Cooled it better than any copper cooler on the market. Gave it away, in the original packaging couple years ago. Wish I could have used it on something else, but today's coolers, Especially Noctua, are so much better.
Hey Gamers Nexus, can you maybe map out the relevant processors of past (and possibly of the future) and clarify about how much performance increase in % we might be possibly able to expect from the coming new processors in gaming. And what has been in recent years the trajectory in % by how much in average the performance gets better. It would cut through all the hype around new stuff. Thanks!🦾
Just checked your R1 review from 4 years ago... wow :)
My only problem was your odd complaint about the noctua cooler fan mount.
It is a wire that for me strongly latches onto the fan and is so hard to see that I didnt even notice it at first.
It is so clean and simple I cant believe anybody could call it not good.
It's simple. Wouldn't call it clean.
The noctua clip bothers me a little each time I have to mount it since I go OCD with it..... counting fins to ensure the fan is perfectly straight and trying to finagle the clip into the right place. I'm impressed by the simplicity of Zalman's fan mount. Their motherboard mount reminds me of what cheap coolers used 10 years ago.
Well, I can't wait to get a rad for my next computer in 2 years :P but went all middle class this time, which means air cool but wanted a really quiet fan. Noctua seems to dominate that space so maybe I am just too happy with what I got to think about the clip.
I've wondered what happened to Zalman, they used to make such good air coolers and were the dominant brand back in the mid-2000s. When Intel was making CPUs that ran incredibly hot, the top of the line Zalman was the only air cooler I could find that could actually keep one of my PCs running at a safe temp. Sad to hear what later, but I hope the people currently running the company are legitimately trying to restore it to the way it was when they made great products.
Nice! did not expect this so soon after seeing it your last video. Keep up the good work GN team