Introduction

I would like to thank Eric of Zalman USA for providing us with this review sample.

Zalman has brought many revolutionary cooling accessories to the market over the years, ranging from fanless watercooling to all-copper CPU/GPU coolers. They even have their own line of power supplies, fan controllers, and headphones. When we hear Zalman we usually think "quiet". But lately through a line of all-copper high performance heatsinks their name is also associated with overclocking.

Packaging

The CNPS 9500 LED is the first Zalman CPU cooler I have seen come in a box. The box it comes in has graphics depicting how the cooler works, and a performance graph showing how it compares against other coolers.


Above you can see that the cooler itself is easily visible from the outside, if you are shopping in a store, this makes it easier to compare the cooler to other heatsinks, size wise.


Here is the performance comparison graph.


Listed on the box are the manufacturer's specifications for the cooler.


Here we can see some of the graphics images showing different aspects of the cooler.


The cooler itself and a box of accessories are all that’s in the box. The cooler is nicely protected inside its hard plastic shell, and the accessories are nicely stored and organized into bags in the box.

Accessories

The cooler supports many sockets, there are mounting accessories provided for 478 / 784 / 939 / 940 and LGA775. I will mount it on a Socket 775 system, because the Prescott core which I will use to test is known for its leaky 90nm process and its high TDP.


Here I have laid out all the provided mounting accessories.


Above are the mounting accessories for 478 and LGA775 platforms, the two black screws are vital for almost all the mounting techniques.


This is the provided thermal grease. Later on in the review I will show you a comparison for the provided grease verse Arctic Silver 5.


One thing I like about Zalman, is that with every Zalman product I have ever owned, it always comes with a case badge sticker. I like collecting these stickers and showing them off on my monitor next to my other stickers like the Pentium 4.