Zalman northbridge cooler

[JML]

Is this better than a blue orb? What's the best northbridge cooler?

You can check out the Zalman as well as the Blue orb @ www.2cooltek.com

[Silversinksam]

The Zalman if used without a fan is not as good as a blue orb, the blue orb beats it by 1 degree celsius from a few reviews I've read.

[JML]

Did the orb beat it by 1c when the zalman did or did not have a fan?

[Silversinksam]

The Blorb beat it when the Zalman wasnt using the Zalman fan, Zalman charges extra for the fan, like 7 bucks The Zalman is $19.99 w/o the fan, the blue orb costs $6.95, and the Zalman is fairly larger than a IU cooler so its not the best product for the job. There are definitly better cooling options than the Zalman line.

Why am I so anti Zalman you may ask?

This is Zalmans motto "World's highest performance heatsink manufactured by Zalman"

This is utter nonesense.:eek:

[Intraveinous]

Want the Zalman no fan performance without paying 20 bucks for it??? Get a hack saw and a PII or PPro Heatsink, cut a 40x40mm chunk out of it, and then thermal epoxy it to your board... Problem solved... All the Zalman is, is a larger heatsink than typical, more surface area = similar cooling without a fan. So basically, just look for a heatsink that has a pin/fin length of about 1 inch above the base plate, cut a chunk off of it, and go... The one thing the Zalman/cut bigger Heatsink does have for it is similar cooling with less noise. 1C is pretty negligible and falls into the margin of error more often than not... So if you're trying to get the quietest PC Possible, there's that. My solution, of course, was to mount a Heatsink chunk like that, then throw a 26CFM 60mm fan on it... hehe... Now that's northbridge cooling.
So, as far as credit where credit is due, the Zalman performs pretty well without a fan.
Peace
John

[Intraveinous]

Also, As far as Zalman goes as a company, they may make some silly claims and so forth, but the entire mission of the company is to get DECENT cooling with as little noise as possible, hence their CNPS (Computer Noise Prevention Series) products... So while their northbridge cooler may not outperform an orb, it comes within 1C without a fan, and while the CNPS-5000+ may not outperform an SK6, but mine with the stock fan keeps me pretty darn cool... Don't take this as disrespect to you, Sam, I'm just saying, take statements like those as what they are, Advertising, Step Thermodynamics says the same thing and then sells remarked GlobalWin products. And to take the Zalman products for what they are, low noise alternative that perform well enough that your computer will not overheat, but will not deafen you either.
Peace
John

[Silversinksam]

Intraveinous,
No offense taken, I agree with you that the Zalman line is decent if your looking for a low noise alternative, but as far as Overclocking Hsf's go, there are better solutions. Personally I cant deal with high decibals and all my fans are on rheostats and I despise the Delta Black label fans noise output as much as I dislike Zalmans crazy marketing antics.

ps>Your solution to northbridge cooling is a good one;)

[JML]

I think I have enough room for a normal cpu heatsink so I can use a larger fan (that should do the job nicely) I'll get on off of allelectronics.com. Thanks for the info guys