Zalman CNPS11X Extreme CPU Heatsink Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
1,385 words · ~6 min read
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today I'll be unboxing the cnps 11x
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extreme this is an ultimate Extreme Performance CPU cooling cooler
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called the cnps 11x on the back we find some information
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which is pretty typical all right powerful cooling performance qmax of up
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to 350 Watts v-shaped dual heat sink
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design for optimal air flow composite heat pipe heat transfer capacity
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enhanced 1.5x
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okay we have composite heat pipes which means that they are not a typical axial
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Groove they are not a typical centered metal type but they actually use axial
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grooves and centered metal in order to speed up the flow of the liquid and yes
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it is a liquid or a vapor or whatever the phase that it happens to be in that
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is inside the heat pipe so let's explain how heat pipes work real quick I
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actually saw a hilarious Hardware mod that someone did where they cut off the
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top of their heat pipes on their cooler so that their side panel would fit so
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they took their cooler and they just cut off all the tops of the heat pipes and
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they were like oh my my cooler is so bad my CPU overheats oh that's
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terrible yes that would happen and the reason for that is that heat pipes on
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the inside have a little bit of liquid sometimes it's water sometimes it's
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something else depending on what kind of heat pipes we're talking about and what
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that liquid does is it goes down to the CPU where it it becomes a liquid then
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the CPU because it's hot inside the CPU heat pipe it's low pressure right so the
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the boiling point is much lower so so it gets hot even at 40° 50° it boils it
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evaporates and then the vapor flows up to the top of the heat pipe where it's
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cool where it gets cooled by the fan and the fins that it's attached to and all
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that good stuff and then turns back into a liquid and runs back down to the CPU now well then how does a heat pipe work
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if it's not right side up like this well that is what the axial grooves and the
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centered metal are for they cause the liquid to make its way back down to the
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CPU no matter what okay so there you
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learned something today if you didn't know how heat pipes work you also
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learned that it's not a good idea to cut them because then they won't they'll
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perform about as well as a tube of copper which doesn't perform very well
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for carrying large amounts of heat oo that looks nice I've always love
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the look of Zalman heat sinks although I've done almost nothing in terms of
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Zalman unboxing on my YouTube channel here so why don't
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we do accessories first where we will find lots
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of lots of little parts of stuff oh wow
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okay so uh sockets it's going to be compatible with all the latest sockets
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including 1155 1156 1366 775 am2 am2
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plus and am3 okay so this looks like
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Intel this looks like probably AMD no this looks like Intel this I don't know
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what it looks like basically you got one of these you got some thermal grease you
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got one of these you got a sticker you
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got some pads and some okay you got a
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four pin pwm fan connector adapter to make your four pin pwm fan quieter see
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it's just got a little inline resistor which is awesome I love those I have a
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little collection of them at home you got some of those some of those okay you
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got some back plates you got one back plate I'm going to do this W that's how
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I open BS today okay so your back plate is going to protect your motherboard
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from warping or breaking when you put
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this heavy old cooler on it although I'll tell you guys the cnps 11x is not
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that heavy now the first thing I notice about this cooler is that this is one of
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the most dense fin Arrangements I have
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ever seen on a CPU Cooler now what that
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allows zman to do is have more surface
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area now well mo more surface area that means better cooling right yes in most
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cases more surface area means cooling so
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what if I like ramped it up and I made the surface area just a solid Mass well
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then we wouldn't have better cooling because no air would pass through that would be bad so more surface area is
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better as long as you can push air through it so what zman has done is they
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have made these areas with fins actually
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quite thin okay so you can see the fins are not very
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thick okay and then uh what they've done
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is they've enclosed it completely on on the top with plastic and the bottom with
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another plastic shroud and then they put a big beefy fan on the front of it nice
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big blades I'm going to go ahead and assume they've designed this for static
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pressure more than anything else so it's not going to spin at a huge RPM or
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anything like that actually what RPM yeah up to up to about 2,000 RPM okay so
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that is going to be designed to push air through this not necessarily at a high
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rate of speed but at a fast enough rate to pull a lot of heat away from it so
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let's compare Surface area right so this has what appears to be like look at this
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compared to a Corsair H or
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a70 I mean that could be up to hold on
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okay move the camera for a sec so I can see okay
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uh that looks like about double the fin density of an a70 so in literally half
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the the physical size it can have the same surface area as an a70 pretty neat
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okay heat pipes terms of heat pipes we've got five heat pipes that are not
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heat pipe Direct although that doesn't always provide a performance Advantage
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anyway but we've got a very smooth looking base there's your obligatory
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finger shot where you can see how shiny that is uh the base appears to be convex
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based on looking at the reflection of my light through it okay so what that means
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is that with high mounting pressures you got nice good contact between the base
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and the CPU five heat Pipes making contact all along the base that are
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going to be and that which is then touching your CPU uh what else we got here so yeah a
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12 mil fan which I mentioned a couple times it looks like you can replace the
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fan which was one of my complaints about my very first Zalman cooler which was a
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cnps 7000 I got the CU version I decided
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to go all out and get the heavy CU version which everyone assured me was
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going to break my motherboard but I mean come on we have coolers now that are
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like three four times five times the size of that thing in weight so clearly
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wasn't that much of a problem um but anyway that was one of my complaints
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about that heat sink was that I wasn't able to change the fan but looks like they've remedied that you can put on
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whatever 120 mil fan you
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please I think that's pretty much it that's all I wanted to say thank you for
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checking out my unboxing today the cnps
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11x ultimate Extreme Performance don't
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forget to subscribe to lonus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other
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computer videos oh and one thing all else to mention about this fan is
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that it has blue LEDs so I just need to
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find a hold on which one's the RPM sensor there we go yeah blue LED fan see
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glows and stuff