Zalman CNPS20LQ 120mm CPU Liquid Cooling Unit Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,185 words · ~5 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the zelman cnps 20 lq now the cnps now
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if you guys have been PC Enthusiast for
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long enough you'll remember what that
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actually stands for speaking of which I think I still have one of the
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first like Enthusiast grade products
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that I ever bought see if I can find it ah
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yes no this isn't ah this isn't the one I was thinking of the first one I bought
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was actually a cnps 7,000 which was the
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original uh flower from zman this is a
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7700 the only difference being that it uses a 120 mm fan and the other one that
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I had was a pure copper one that weighed
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a ton cool really well well for back in
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the day anyway okay okay so cnps case noise prevention system or something
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along those lines uh if I'm if I'm wrong if I don't remember exactly correct
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please please do leave a comment and let me know but either way we've come a long
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way so this is a liquid cooling unit liquid sealed water cooler for easy
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installation and freedom from maintenance built-in pump within water block minimizes tubes therefore
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increasing reliability that that is actually true more joints is more points
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of failure micro fins made of pure copper inside the water block provide
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excellent heat transfer so that is referring to the block right here durable and long-lasting tubes are easy
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to bend allowing easy installation if these are the ones I think they are then that much is true as well low profile
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water block design enhances air flow inside the chassis this hey this can be
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a factor guys like check this out so over here this is my uh IV Bridge test
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bench and you can see here that um the
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vrm coolers so around here on the voltage regulation modules do require
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some active air flow so when you have a fan on here they obviously get some
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however if you have a big bul bulky water cooler what that can do is it can
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actually impede the air flow around the CPU socket area uh causing it to
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overheat which can cause it to be less stable so if you have a nice low profile
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CPU water block then you should be less likely to run into any difficulty with
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that so here we
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are comes with a pwm fan that runs at
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2,000 RPM at full speed inside we find some foam we find a
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users manual which uh looks pretty
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straightforward okay then we find the unit itself it's got a bit of a
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different look now this is an acch oem unit so if you guys are familiar with
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what that means you'll know that it means you've got uh a fairly bog
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standard set of mounting hardware so you see here these are all labeled 775 11 56
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and 1366 are all on there you can see we've
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got uh AMT retentions right here we've
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also got our Intel hold down here and then with these clips right here I
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believe it should be compatible with socket 2011 or LGA 2011 so you got all
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the various oh it might be this one Whatever you've got all the various
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retentions that you need for 775 fm1
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1156 1155 1366 2011 am3 am3 plus am2 am2
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plus pretty much whatever you need comes with a zman fan
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pwm fairly long wire on it so you can run that to wherever it is that you need
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to go seems to be a fairly sturdy construction compared to the fans that
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you usually see included with these uh prefabbed water cooling doodads a little
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plastic cover here and we find something
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that looks pretty familiar at this point
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so one key difference that we find is that it does use the more rubbery style
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of tubing what this does is this minimizes the amount of evaporation that
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can occur compared to ah these ones over
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here these kinds of uh more plastic tubings they're also much much easier to
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Route so these tubes are not they will Kink if I go much further than that
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whereas this guy right here is capable
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of being tied up into a knot without actually kinking due to the thick
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of the wall so having a thin wall tubing means you are more prone to kinking
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whereas having a thick wall tubing means you are less prone to kinking there's no
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performance Advantage either way but it definitely gives you more flexibility in
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terms of like if your CPU socket happens to be here or here or here or here like
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here then no big deal now you've also got some more installation flexibility
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where you're using uh rotating fittings
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right here so you don't have to worry about any leaks or anything like that you've also got pre-applied thermal
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compound this is air good quality thermal compound so if this is the first
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time you're installing it I wouldn't recommend replacing it with something else you're going to want to just go
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ahead and install that right on there it's only if you take it off and need to
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reapply it you need to clean both your CPU and the surface and then uh reapply
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thermal compound now for the radiator we see it's using a thick style radiator so
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you're going to see better performance than you would with a thin 120 mm rad
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although not quite as good as you'd see with a thin dual 120 mm rad like the one
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over there on the h 100 that's running on my IV Bridge test bench and I think
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that pretty much covers it as far as other installation tips go the last
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thing I do is whenever possible you want to install it with the barbs up on the
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radiator sorry pardon me uh barbs down because what that means is any air
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pockets will be isolated here rather than constantly cycling through your
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Loop and making noise as they pass through the pump which is contained in
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the CPU block here and I think that pretty much covers
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it thank you for check checking out this unboxing and First Look video at the Zan
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cnps 20 lq don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews
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and other computer videos and doesn't this have a sharp look with the blue on
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the sides of the radiator as long as you got like a blue theme going on in your
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case that's going to look really good might not work with you know sorry I got
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my salad here just put that away might not work with like a red themed system
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like this one but if you have a blue themed system that should look really sharp