Zalman CNPS2X 120W CPU Cooler with Heatsink and 80mm Fan

Positive feedback for Amazon as I bought this at the beginning of March, because fitting this required dismantling my computer due to lack of motherboard cut out I put off installing this. When I came round to do it at the end of May Zalman had neglected to include the screws to attach the cooler to it's backplate! I thought I was stuffed but Amazon sent me out a replacement the next day. Superb service!!Now to the thoroughly disappointing product...Firstly the first one sent out was missing pieces. Pretty annoying and if I had bought it somewhere else would have made the item useless. When the replacement arrived I fitted it promptly this time only to discover that it was a total nightmare to fit. Even with the motherboard out and on my work table the fitting of this cooler is the most fiddly I've ever come across. You have to juggle tiny little screws and line up the cooler completely by eye after you have applied the thermal paste. But after finally getting it in place I decided I could overlook all these failings because it looks quite smart and matches the colour theme of my build. However... then I turned my computer on.I purchased this to replace to stock cooler on my AMD A6-6400k in a low profile HTPC chassis. The stock cooler performed averagely at best, unfortunately the Zalman performs below average. I almost couldn't believe it after all the faffing about and effort and my notoriously poor stock AMD part was outperforming my new swanky cooler! I thought I had made an error in fitting. So I removed the cooler, cleaned the paste and applied new thermal paste and screwed it down even tighter than before. However this did not help.To summarise it can not adequately cool my processor without running the fan at about 2000rpm under load, conversely making it louder than the original that only spun on average around 1400-1600rpm. Also because the CPU runs hotter in general it then causes all the other case fans to run faster than they did previously. Of course I can change settings to compensate for this but it sort of defeats the point of the cooler in the first place! This is rated up to a TDP of 125w apparently, my processor is a 65w part and it can't keep it cool. It looks like I will be putting the stock cooler back and this will be sitting in my parts bin for the rest of eternity.

Lovely small cooler with all the parts necessary to install with my i5 and motherboard, on performance I can't comment as I'm still waiting for the rest of my PC parts to arrive to finish the build so will revise this review shortly.My only complaint so far is that the so called thermal paste that is included with the cooler was an empty but unopened packet, only a minor inconvenience as I had some AC5 left over from a previous build so opted to use that instead and no doubt it will perform better with the AC5.I have concerns that it won't be man enough to cool an i5 under heavy load due to the size of it being very small but I have bought Zalaman products before and been very impressed with their performance, I will make sure to comment on this further once I get my small PC built and running all that I need it to, namely Windows 7 64Bit with Unity and Construct 2 for game development.

It is a cute and quiet small zalman heatsink, but it struggles with cooling anything beyond a 65w CPU.. I tried this on my haswell i7 rated at 84w TDP and it sat at 46 degrees on the BIOS screen, and went to 73 degrees under stress! Where as I tried it on a 4570S i5 (65ww TDP) and got 38 degrees in the BIOS and 65 degrees under stress.Under stress means running 3dmark Firestrike Physics and checking the reported temperatures and then restarting the PC and entering the BIOS and taking the temperature after leaving the system there for 5 full minutes (the BIOS idles the CPU at a slightly higher clockspeed for some reason)So, it is a good cooler, but I can only recommend 65w TDP CPU's or less to get the best out of it. For hotter CPU's I use the Zalman CNPS8900 which has 2 heatpipes rather then 1 and is double the size!

I genuinely can't get over that this fan works. It's such a small heat-sink with a super quiet fan on top of my i5 4590, but it keeps things under 58C, and not much over even when I'm pushing it with VR.I've had it for a month now, so will update this review after a longer period of time, but so far so good. I'd of given 5* if it kept my processor a bit cooler, but beyond that I can't complain.

Brought this as I know copper is the best heat conductor next to gold(Gold is a bit expensive lol) but don't be fooled the fins are not copper but aluminium and sprayed, apart from that it does the job, had the fins been copper I would have given it a five star, oh yes it has copper core and heat pipes underneath and soldered on to the fins, it will be ok for 120c cpu but you will find at that temp the fan would be running at full speed and can be heard at 1.5meter away..

I used this to replace the stock cooler on an AMD A8 CPU/APU primarily to quieten it down. This unit is about the same size as a stock A8 heat sink/fan, one of the reasons I chose it as space inside the case was limited.Unless your case gives you access to the underside of the motherboard you WILL have to remove the PC motherboard to the back plate.I can't really comment on the cooling provided by the unit because:- I also replaced two case fans which move less air than the one they replaced- SpeedFan (the app I use to check on case temps) says that the CPU temp is 0C (which is clearly wrong!I can say that the PC is now whisper quiet. Not quite silent but close.

Nice and quiet. I can hardly hear it, even with the case open and at full speed. Occasionally sounded as if one of the blades was hitting the fins when new, but stopped after a bit of use. Cooling my i5 6600 at 25c idle and up to 70c under load. My case has little ventilation, so does well for the conditions.

Not quiet as well fitting had to for go using the back plate on the bottom half of my Asrock FM2 78 ITX board otherwiseit would bow badly and it was proofing to awkward.