Package and Contents

After spending some time with normal tower-type coolers, we head into Zalman territory with the CNPS9900 MAX. Zalman's cooler comes in a sporty-looking packaging. There is a front-thru-right size cutout that gives you a three-dimensional view of the heatsink. The front bears the CNPS9900 MAX logo, and lists out the most important features. It also lets you know upfront if it's the red LED variant or the blue one. Ours is the red one. Most of the right side is spent in displaying a "powerful cooling performance" caption, some space is lost to the cutout, and four award badges are brandished. On the left side, there's quite some activity. There a graphic is showing you the advantage of the "Composite Heatpipe" used in this cooler, socket and CPU compatibility, and a table with detailed specifications. The back side elaborates the bullet-point features on the front with pictures, and some more.


Upon opening the box, there's a plastic shell holding the heatsink, and a compartment holding the accessories in a packet, the large back-plate loose, and the instruction leaflet.

The accessories packet contains:

• A sachet containing all the screws, nuts and bolts you’ll need
• Separate retention plates for Intel and AMD sockets
• An Allen key to fasten the main screws
• Double-sided tape square, loading block (not required for LGA1156/LGA1366 installations)
• A syringe with Zalman ZM-STG2 Performance thermal compound