Wesley's Tool-Box

I am back with something for you to read upon! This time, it's a review/comparison of two high-performance heatsinks, Alpha PAL6035 and Zalman CNPS3100-Gold. I've been meaning to put up a review of Alpha PAL6035 a few months ago, but I think the wait has proven for better. Go here and see which one comes out on top.

• System Configuration

CPU:	AMD Duron 650@945 & AMD Athlon(T-bird) 750@1113
M/B:	Asus A7V (VIA KT133 chipset) - VIA 4-in-1 v4.27 -
Cooling:	PAL6035 & CNPS3100
RAM:	256MB x 1 OCZ PC150 CAS2 SDRAM
Video:	SUMA GeForce2 GTS 32MB - NVIDIA Det. v6.34 -
OS:	Windows 2000 - Version 5.00.2195 SP1, English -
Else:	Motherboard Monitor 5.03, Seventeam ST-301HR PSU

  Update: Kyle of HardOCP is concerned that the temperature reading of Alpha you see here looks wrong. I'm quite aware of the situation and I do believe it is related to the A7V's temperature sensor being a bit inaccurate. But the readings have been quite reproduceable in this system, and since this can be seen as relative comparison, you can still validly determine which one is better.
  Update 2: I've confirmed that my temperature reading is actually more representative of the truth since I use external temperature sensor attached directly to the core instead of using temperature sensor inside the CPU socket.

• The Benchmark

Chart data was assessed by using interval log option of Motherboard Monitor in steps of 30 seconds for one hour of boot time, then entered into Microsoft Excel to produce the actual chart.



  First test was done with Duron 650 overclocked to 945MHz. It is easily recognizable that CNPS3100-Gold pulls ahead of PAL6035 by a comfortable 2 degrees in normal mode. This means that, despite the fan's airflow is distributed to the mainboard in general instead of focused on the heatsink itself, CNPS3100 is effectively cooling the hot overclocked Duron with ease. Silent mode operation is another matter, though. Being 11 degrees higher than normal mode, it is unsuitable for overclocking. However, the fan was very quiet, so it can be useful in non-overclocked environments and CPUs that dissipate less heat than AMD chips, such as Intel Celeron.



  Another round of tests were performed with 'Thunderbird' Athlon 750 running at notably high 1113MHz. The CNPS3100 again beats PAL6035, this time in a slightly larger margin. Silent mode of CNPS3100 could not be completed and was not listed here because it promptly caused halting of system within 10 minutes due to overheat.

• Conclusions

 The ambient temperature was closely monitored with thermometers such as this Hydro-Quebec thermometer that's been rolling around since my Canadian days and I've taken care to make sure that the temperature remained constant during testing to prevent measurement errors.

 The verdict of this comparison is clear. While both heatsinks provide good cooling, CNPS3100-Gold comes out superior all the time, winning this round of match. Also, looking at the performance delta between CNPS3100 and PAL6035 and then comparing the results from other hardware sites, while the comparance may not be really so linear, we can safely assume that it can take on the all-copper 'hedgehog' cooler or the monstrous GlobalWin FOP38, both of which are currently taking the performance crown, pretty well. Since FOP38's delta fan is notorious for its near-unbearable noise levels, CNPS3100 with its low-noise fans may be a better alternative.

 Finally, I end this review-comparison with testimony from 'Schpankme', a regular at MadOnion's forums and chatrooms(where I am working as a moderator) who is probably the first American to get his hands on the CNPS3100. Yes, I've shipped him the product personally because Zalman doesn't have foreign offices/distributors outside Korea. He is seeking to form a distributor of this product in the USA and I'll be attempting to arrange this with him imminently. Anyone who are interested may contact me.

  Update 3: I have now set up international order page for this heatsink [HERE]. Those who were thinking of ordering Zalman heatsinks can rest easy now.

WDSoft,

Thought I'd drop you a quick update on my newly acquired FHS unit from Zalman. The quality is awesome, the size is just right and the clip is easy to install and remove, the fan bracket is a very useful idea for any HSF. I however am NOT impressed with the FAN that came with my unit, and wonder if it actually functions properly or is broke! I am plugging up with the 4-pin adapter, yet it barley puts out enough air to even feel it on your hand. I have replaced the fan with Sunon 80mm x 25mm, 12v, .16 amp, 2.0 watt, 4500 RPM, 36 CFM, 32 dBA, 3 pin. This fan is very quiet inside the case, and as you can see by picture attached to this email, it really does a lot for the cooling potential of this setup. The temps listed are for average usage, which consists of email, web-surfing, and Microsoft cards type game play. Load testing was accomplished using Prime95, ran for 24 hours in conjunction with other apps and games; and at NO times did my temps get above 40C. I must say I really enjoy my newly found prize, and I owe a big thanks to you for trusting me enough to order me one. Now your thinking to yourself, ok pank has a more powerful fan blowing substantially more air across the heat sink surface, so naturally it will be some what cooler. Well, yes you could think that, and it would be correct, but I have also disconnected my 2-side 92mm blow holes, and am running with full covers on the case. I also attribute my understanding of how to lap the Heat Sink, as well as applying the proper ratio of COPPER thermal compound before installation of Heat Sink to CPU Core.

Understand, I am in no-way holding you responsible for the units fan performance or the lack thereof. I would like to know if your fan has what I term the same lackluster performance. One last final note, I wasn't able to send you the sanding cloths we spoke of. It seems the store was out of the assorted packs, and just got them in today. I will however be mailing them off first thing Monday morning ad hopefully you will receive them a few days later!

Thank you again for making me aware of this fantastic FHS Gold-3100. I have decided to import these units into the States for sale, could you be of assistance in knowing the quantity and price breaks I could receive.

Blue Skies;

Schpankme Verimuch

• The Contender - Zalman CNPS3100-Gold

 CNPS3100-Gold is a socket HSF from South Korea's Zalman Tech Co., Ltd.. This company is relatively unknown to the computing world because it is an upstart; it was founded in 1999 and started marketing their products for only around 10 months, generally limited to Korean markets. Their flagship product is the patented Flower HeatSink(FHS) as shown above. By forming the heatsink in the likes of a 'flower', it is meant to achieve effective cooling without a fast and noisy fan. This is the basis of their product concept, actually. CNPS in the name of the product stands for 'Computer Noise Prevention System'. This heatsink is the part of Zalman's line of products targeted for low-noise computer systems. Other products they market include FHS for video cards, NP(Noise Prevention) PSUs, and NP Hard Disks. They claim that noise-less computer systems can be built once the person uses all of the products Zalman provides in his/her system. Zalman does sell fully configured systems, also.

 CNPS3100 is the latest in the product lines of the Zalman HSFs, just released in the December of 2000. You can read its news release here in Korean (English product page is here). Zalman has yet to revamp its site to provide multilingual support, so the English page is my translation of the Korean counterpart. FHS was initially made in aluminium with a few fins, but over time, to increase its cooling performance, the recent models are made in pure copper. Pure copper rusts over time, so the latest FHS included in CNPS3100 is coated in either pure gold or chrome to prevent rust. The model tested here is the more expensive(and good-looking) version, the CNPS3100-Gold. The Gold version costs about US$10 more than the Chrome coated version. The shape of the heatsink, the FHS, should no doubt be an eye-catcher for most of you.

 It is without doubt that the shape of the FHS has intrigued a lot of people. Since it is supposed to operate with slow/silent fan or no fan at all while most heatsinks must have fast fans attached, either the company selling it is out of mind or the heatsink must possess cooling performance that is worth (literally) gold. Let's take a look at its key specs:

Specification
Dimensions(mm):	110 x 52 x 65
Mass (grams):	296
Cooling Fan:	Adda 80mm
Fan Speed(rpm):	3000 ~ 1500(Silent)
Fan Power(cfm):	38.6 ~ 20.2(Silent)
Thermal Resistance:	0.28 ~ 0.35(Silent) C/W

 The specifications are already impressive. On their rated thermal resistance, it already beats Alpha PAL6035 in any mode. You will have to see the benchmarks to see if this claim can be backed up, but it would actually be a shame if this massive heatsink weighing in at 70% heavier wouldn't perform at least as good as the competitor. Now the thing that many of you are wondering would be in the form of, "where's the 80mm fan that's listed here? How are you going to install that on the contraption?" Read along and that will be answered.

• CNPS3100's Packaging

 The image on the left is the original package that CNPS3100-Gold comes in. In case you're wondering what those words at the left-top corner are supposed to say, it means, "Powerful... Silent..." Open the box and you see the contents, as shown on the right. You get the instruction booklet(all in Korean just yet), the heatsink itself, and the clip to attach it on(see left of the heatsink). Like PAL6035, it also comes with thermal paste. It comes in an easy-to-use syringe rather than tube, however. At the bottom of the box, you see the fan that was not seen in the initial photo attached to a metal holder with two sets of screws for attaching the holder onto the system case. Just how is all this going to fit into a system? Watch.

• CNPS3100 Installation

 Installing the FHS part of the CNPS3100-Gold is not unlike installing a normal heatsink. Put the clip into the FHS(it slides into place) and push the right edge of the clip to snap on. You can use a flathead or philips screwdriver to help installing/uninstalling it, for there are holes on the clip to accomodate such things. Now comes the peculiar part you'll never see while installing conventional heatsinks. Cooling fan comes attached on a metal holder, which is in turn installed onto the case. This is obviously because the FHS does not have a place to attach fans on(actually, fans can be installed directly onto FHS with a small adaptor screwed in place, but Zalman has no plans to market the adaptor yet). You attach the holder by unscrewing top three screws holding the expansion cards, putting the holder in, and screwing them back.

 You may notice two things of concern here. For one, the fans don't seem to be aligned with the heatsink well. This is not to worry, as the cooling performance is not affected by the location of the fan once it is almost as close to the FHS as shown in the picture. This is mentioned in the instruction booklet and I have moved around the fans closer/farther and confirmed this. In fact, the cooling fan is intended to double as the northbridge chipset fan, so the installation shown in the picture is rather optimal. You can see the northbridge covered in a small green heatsink below the FHS in the left picture. This chip gets very hot during operation and since most mainboards do not actively cool this important chip, CNPS3100's fan setup is well thought up.

 Another concern is that the metal holder leaves no room for installing case fans. This is not so much of a trouble because you can simply attach the case fan on the opposite side to provide same case cooling.

 The two heatsinks looks fine now, but how do they really perform?

• The Champion - Alpha PAL6035

 PAL6035 is a socket HSF from Japan's Alpha Company Ltd.. Alpha has been producing high quality heatsinks with their 'microforging' technology(hence the URL) that enables them to make create heatsinks of efficient shapes since 1989. PAL6035 is one of the top performing heatsinks they offer, second only to PEP66. Here are some key specs of PAL6035:

Specification
Dimensions(mm):	60 x 60 x 35
Mass (grams):	175
Cooling Fan:	Sanyo Denki 60mm
Fan Speed(rpm):	3800
Fan Power(cfm):	20.0
Thermal Resistance:	0.37 C/W

 The specifications reveal that the heatsink is quite a competent model, and it has consistently proven to be well-performing throughout various tests performed by hardware sites such as HardOCP or Tom's Hardware. So we can say it is a good 'reference' high-performance HSF.

• PAL6035's Packaging

 Alpha PAL6035 comes completely unassembled, in part because you assemble the heatsink as you install it on the CPU. In the picture, you see the black-anodized heatsink with Alpha's unique copper-plated bottom. You also see the heatsink cover for effective airflow, as well as the 20cfm Sanyo Denki 60mm fan. This fan is standard part of the PAL6035MUC package that Alpha sells directly. If you get PAL6035 from other places, it may be replaced with different fans. The clip shown here is the old kind, and Alpha has updated the clip for better compatibility with AMD's SocketA CPUs. However, with a bit of bending, the old clip works with SocketA fine. To wrap up the packaging, there is a set of screws for attaching the fan onto the heatsink and Alpha brand thermal grease in a tube.

• PAL6035 Installation

 Installing Alpha is something of moderate difficulty, but not confusing. First you put the clip into the heatsink, then attach it onto the processor. Depending on how dexterous the person is, you can push the clip down with a finger and snap it into place, or a small flathead driver may be necessary to aide/guide the clip in. That's the hard part. Then you put on the cover and screw on the fan to finish installation to get it look like the picture above. Unlike the picture, you have to plug the fan connector in to get it work, of course.

 Now let's take a look at the contender.

• CPUs are Getting Hotter

 Heat in computers have always posed problems to a certain degree. Preliminary electronic computers using vacuum tubes such as ENIAC could not run for more than 30 minutes easily due to burnouts of overheating tubes. Mainframe computers usually operated in air-conditioned rooms. Some modern super-computers operate suspended in a case filled with inert liquid coolant.

 However, personal computers traditionally had few heat-related problems because the components never ran fast or hot compared to the state-of-the-art technologies that existed at the time. Few, if any, systems with heatsinks on a 286 or 386 chips appeared, for the chips were only warm to the touch during normal operation.

 This trend started to change at around the propagation of 486 chips. They were already becoming too hot to touch, and faster versions of 486 started to have heatsink attached on the ceramic package. The Pentium Overdrive processor, shown on the left and plugged into a 486 system, shows such examples of early heatsink coupled CPUs. First Pentium CPUs, the 60MHz and 66MHz versions, were notorious for excessive heat dissipation and was one of the first personal computer CPUs requiring active cooling by motorized fan. Since then, HeatSink-Fan combo(HSF) became standard attachment to CPU.

 The problem did not end there, though. Personal computer CPU development was accelerating day by day and introduction of ever-so-powerful CPUs were frequent. Processing power-wise, top-of-the-line CPUs today are comparable to top 100 supercomputers of only 4 to 5 years ago. In consequence, CPU's heat dissipation rate gradually increased. Smaller manufacturing process does help CPU produce less heat, but this does not help much in reducing the heat dissipation of the most powerful processor on the market. This is because the operating frequency is increasing at a faster rate. One of the hottest(literally and figuratively) chip of today, AMD's 'Thunderbird' Athlon can run without any discernible heat if you run it at 66MHz like the aforementioned early Pentiums. But you don't run Athlon at 66MHz in reality; you run it at up to 1.2GHz, almost 20 times of the Pentium speed.

 Where does all this lead to? Need for better and better HSFs. Some overclockers go so far as to install thermoelectric modules(a.k.a. Peltiers) or water cooling on the CPU, and a few extremists even attempts to dip the system in liquid nitrogen to obtain ultimate cooling. This cannot be the solution for everyone, though, because installation of such things without good background knowledge and caution can ruin the whole system. Companies like VapoChill offers powerful cooling solution by effectively bringing in a small refrigerator into the computer case. This method may be safer, but this is out of reach for many, because the cost is too high.

 And so, in today's article, I have compared two heatsinks deemed to be among the most powerful HSF solutions out there.