I upgraded the CPU cooler in my machine this past weekend. I went with the Zalman cnps9500led. It’s 530 grams of copper love with a 92mm led fan. It’s cetainly the largest cooler I could have added – just a few millimeters of clearance.
I removed the AMD stock heatsink and fan (which didn’t feel any lighter to me) and cleaned up the old thermal compound with Artic Clean remover and purifier solutions. After appling a new bed of Artic Silver 5, installation was a breeze – probably even easier than the stock heatsink I’d say – just two screws hold it down to the mb retension bracket. From looking at the instructions, installing the cooler on other CPUs would involve siginificantly more effort.
I wasn’t thrilled with the two blue leds built into the fan, so before installing I set off to replace them with a couple red leds. I stripped the fan down as far as I wanted to risk and still couldn’t get to where I could unsolder the existing leds. Deciding not to press my luck with prying anything more apart I decided to leave it as is. Luckily the blue leds are not the usual super bright variety and don’t actually look too bad. The result is a nice purplish glow over the cpu.
So how’s it perform? A bit better – but maybe not drastically different. While encoding/burning DVD with Nero, both cores go to 100% for several minutes (at least a half hour). With the stock cooler the CPU temp rose to 54 degrees celcius. The typical idle temp before the upgrade was 47 degrees depending on ambient. With the new cooler, idle hovers around 42 although the CPU still briefly hits 54 degrees when encoding a DVD at full tilt. I have to say I’m shocked not to see any imporvement on the high end, however I did notice the CPU very quickly cooled to 44 degrees after the load easied off. I also have to keep in mind that (a) the processor is overclocked by 10% and (b) the thermal layer hasn’t really had enough time to optimumly bond yet. Another aspect I must mention is that the new cooler is MUCH quieter. So when you add up the lower temps (at low to moderate usage), the faster thermal recovery (after high usage), and the lower noise I’m still very happy with the upgrade.
Tags: Comp hardware / mods
