Today I got my new CPU cooler, to replace my dying Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, that has fought on my side for three years. And I must say that I'm not impressed by this 850-gram, 57€ hunk of copper. I am, in fact, very disappointed about how it compares to a 92mm cooler that I bought for 17€ three years ago.
First of all, it was a bitch to install. Some plastic crap required me to take out the mobo, put a piece of plastic on the back, another piece at the front, mount the cooler and put it back. First of all, again, there were remains from the manufacturing process left everywhere, and they didn't even want to fit on the motherboard because of those. Second, when I finally got the plastic in place and was about to mount the cooler itself, it wouldn't fit, because the clip (Much like the old-school sockets for Pentium 1 and 3) touched the mobo. To attach the sink itself, I had to stick a screwdriver between the fins of the cooler, unscrew the screws that attach the plastic and slide the clip on. It's thinner closer to the base, so it isn't pushing against anything, thankfully.
Then when it came to cooling abilities, I was surprised to see how the old Freezer 7 Pro would run the CPU about 5-10C cooler than this one, and a lot quieter. With the F7P on max effect on 4GHz, it would idle at about 35C. With this one on max, it idles at 53C. I mean comeon! How can a three years old, 17€ 92mm heatpipe-based cooler surpass a brand new, 57€ 110mm direct contact-based one?! Zalman lost a lot of my trust with this cooler. It's in a whole other level than one of the cheapest coolers out there.
For shame, Zalman, for shame.
First of all, it was a bitch to install. Some plastic crap required me to take out the mobo, put a piece of plastic on the back, another piece at the front, mount the cooler and put it back. First of all, again, there were remains from the manufacturing process left everywhere, and they didn't even want to fit on the motherboard because of those. Second, when I finally got the plastic in place and was about to mount the cooler itself, it wouldn't fit, because the clip (Much like the old-school sockets for Pentium 1 and 3) touched the mobo. To attach the sink itself, I had to stick a screwdriver between the fins of the cooler, unscrew the screws that attach the plastic and slide the clip on. It's thinner closer to the base, so it isn't pushing against anything, thankfully.
Then when it came to cooling abilities, I was surprised to see how the old Freezer 7 Pro would run the CPU about 5-10C cooler than this one, and a lot quieter. With the F7P on max effect on 4GHz, it would idle at about 35C. With this one on max, it idles at 53C. I mean comeon! How can a three years old, 17€ 92mm heatpipe-based cooler surpass a brand new, 57€ 110mm direct contact-based one?! Zalman lost a lot of my trust with this cooler. It's in a whole other level than one of the cheapest coolers out there.
For shame, Zalman, for shame.
The idea of any hi-fi system is to reproduce the source material as faithfully as possible, and to deliberately add distortion to everything you hear (due to amplifier deficiencies) because it sounds 'nice' is simply not high fidelity. If that is what you want to hear then there is no problem with that, but by adding so much additional material (by way of harmonics and intermodulation) you have a tailored sound system, not a hi-fi. - Rod Elliot, ESP
