Zalman Releases CNPS20X Twin Tower Cooler - 300 W TDP

[Raevenlord]

Zalman has now achieved global availability of their CNPS20X twin tower cooler, an air-cooling solution designed to dissipate up to 300 W of heat from your CPU of choice. The Zalman CNPS20X features loads of heat transfer technologies, including RDTH (Reverse Direct Touch Heatpipe), an evolution of the now ubiquitous DTH (Direct Touch Heatpipe) technology applied to its six heatpipes, alongside IHD (Interactive Heatpipe transfer Design) for increased thermal performance (Zalman claims this last technology brings improvements in heat dissipation in the order of 20x).

Not only the heatpipe design has been touched upon, though; the company also employed what it calls a 4D corrugated fin design, which means the fins themselves have contours (imagine a honeycomb shape and you're close) that improve heat dissipation and airflow. There's a stack of fins built out of copper, which are located close to the center of the airflow to improve heat dissipation further.






Zalman's Dual Blade impeller technology is also employed here, which the company claims concentrates airflow instead of dispersing it along the outer channels. The company says they have employed a biomimetic design principle to their fans, inspired by spider legs, and achieving reduced vibration and noise on their fan operation (besides the usual gains in employing fluid dynamic bearings). The CNPS20X also features RGB lighting compatible with Razer Chroma. The CNPS20X is available at a pricing around €90.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Dammeron]

And the award for the March 2020 Stupid goes to "Reverse direct touch heatpipe" for a misleading name of a commonly used solution.

 

[xkm1948]

Performance is pretty good according to Kitguru

Zalman CNPS20X and CNPS17X: Noctua didn’t see this coming! - KitGuru

Since publishing our review of Zalman's new CNPS20X and CNPS17X air coolers, we have received a numb

www.kitguru.net

D15 is definitely showing its age during this new era of massive amount of cores. Looking forward to @crazyeyesreaper review on this

 

[freeagent]

D15 is only 260w iirc from what they used to advertise, so if this is 300w it should be just a little better, as the results are showing.

D15 had a good run, but has had some good competition lately.

 

[bonehead123]

In this pic, it shows the fan on the right side mounted at 11mm higher than the other one, does anyone know exactly why is this necessary, as they both appear to be 140mm fans with no significant differences ?

It probably doesn't matter, but since I stare at engineering blueprints all day long, I get paid to be curious (and possibly concerned) when I see things like this

 

[freeagent]

It’s showing 173mm from the mobo to the top of the Heatpipe, if that’s what you mean?

 

[claes]

In this pic, it shows the fan on the right side mounted at 11mm higher than the other one, does anyone know exactly why is this necessary, as they both appear to be 140mm fans with no significant differences ?

It probably doesn't matter, but since I stare at engineering blueprints all day long, I get paid to be curious (and possibly concerned) when I see things like this

View attachment 149492

DDR4 specification is 31mm, some RAM heatsinks are as tall as 43mm+

 

[TechLurker]

Frankly, it's nice to see Zalman back in the game at all. I'm looking forward to them shaking up the cooling market on some level again; though it'll be tough, considering everything's either a tower cooler or a conventional AIO and hardly anyone now leaves radiators outside the PC case ().

The fans themselves are rather interesting; the same versions Zalman sells do not have the black square frame, thus turning them into "frameless" fans. It'll be interesting to see if anyone will ever review them independent of the heatsink; maybe either as intake or radiator fans, and if the black frame helps any with air channeling (as opposed to frameless).

 

[Caring1]

1,300g V's the D15's 980g without fans.
Noctua is still the king in my opinion.
The greater cooling of the Zalman is only achieved through a greater surface area, at the cost of weight, size and clearance.

 

[chodaboy19]

Reminds me of ProlimaTech Megahalems Super Mega Edition:

Super Mega | Prolimatech

 

[Flanker]

When I see Zalman, I still think about those classic flower coolers

 

[SL2]

1,300g V's the D15's 980g without fans.

How do you know that the former is without fans as well?

The greater cooling of the Zalman is only achieved through a greater surface area, at the cost of weight, size and clearance.

Weight is unclear. Size, not really, unless you have a slim case, but yeah, it is taller.

20X: 140 x 170 x 165 mm
D15: 165 x 150 x 161 mm

Noctua is still the king in my opinion.

I dunno, the 17X makes the D15 look expensive.

 

[Vayra86]

Definitely a new, very minor trend in air cooler land, these less dense, but larger fin stacks.

Kinda makes sense because you want the heat out faster now that more is built up under the die, suits the boosty nature of CPUs better I guess. Well I guess its progress that for once isn't just marketing or cosmetics. Nice.

PSA: I wouldn't go all crazy on the KitGuru review alone. Definitely needs second opinion for scoring so well.

 

[bonehead123]

It’s showing 173mm from the mobo to the top of the Heatpipe, if that’s what you mean?

please look again....yes, the top of black fan is sitting at the 173mm measurement line, but the top of the brown-ish one on the right is sitting at the 184mm line....hence my question of the 11mm difference

DDR4 specification is 31mm, some RAM heatsinks are as tall as 43mm+

That may be true, but since the bottom of the brown-ish fan is sitting at 33mm above the mobo, you would need to mount it even higher if your ram has a tall heatsink that is more than 2mm high.... and would certainly rule out any that have a fan(s), like the one on those new Corsair 5000mhz kits for example

 

[Trinbago]

please look again....yes, the top of black fan is sitting at the 173mm measurement line, but the top of the brown-ish one on the right is sitting at the 184mm line....hence my question of the 11mm difference



That may be true, but since the bottom of the brown-ish fan is sitting at 33mm above the mobo, you would need to mount it even higher if your ram has a tall heatsink that is more than 2mm high.... and would certainly rule out any that have a fan(s), like the one on those new Corsair 5000mhz kits for example

What you're seeing is the 2 fan positions superimposed like when you raise the fan to clear a higher memory module

 

[claes]

What you're seeing is the 2 fan positions superimposed like when you raise the fan to clear a higher memory module

Exactly; see the note about RAM in the last image from the OP:

 

[Dammeron]

When I see Zalman, I still think about those classic flower coolers

When I see Zalman, I think of CNPS7000 and ZM80C:

Those were the days, where Zalman could compete against Thermalright SLK-947 (but then SP94/SP97 came and wrecked them all) and had the best GPU cooler on the market, which could handle Radeon 9700 Pro passively.

 

[micropage7]

When I see Zalman, I still think about those classic flower coolers

still one of best looking cooler but if the fins not straight it will ruin the looks badly

 

[Space Lynx]

Arctic 34 esports DUO at $37 both fans at 80% fan speed beats a U12A (at stock rpm) $99 and probably comes close to matching this $100+ Zalman cooler.

Arctic is the one not getting enough love at the moment imo for its price point anyway.

 

[watzupken]

When I see Zalman, I still think about those classic flower coolers

I had one of this, and I still think it looks great and cools well.

As to the brand Zalman, based on my experience with the "customer service", I would recommend against getting anything from this brand. I've wrote in to the "customer service" at least 3 times, but never ever got any response from them. That was at least 3 years back since my 3 queries went, and till now, still nothing from them. I wonder if there is anyone doing customer service there in the first place.

Arctic 34 esports DUO at $37 both fans at 80% fan speed beats a U12A (at stock rpm) $99 and probably comes close to matching this $100+ Zalman cooler.

Arctic is the one not getting enough love at the moment imo for its price point anyway.

This is true. I think the Arctic 34 eSports DUO is worth considering as a good tower heatsink alternative.

 

[eidairaman1]

Frankly, it's nice to see Zalman back in the game at all. I'm looking forward to them shaking up the cooling market on some level again; though it'll be tough, considering everything's either a tower cooler or a conventional AIO and hardly anyone now leaves radiators outside the PC case ().

The fans themselves are rather interesting; the same versions Zalman sells do not have the black square frame, thus turning them into "frameless" fans. It'll be interesting to see if anyone will ever review them independent of the heatsink; maybe either as intake or radiator fans, and if the black frame helps any with air channeling (as opposed to frameless).

Their last cooler was a tower orb