The Zalman Twins: 9500 & 9700 Air Tunnels
by Wesley Fink on February 19, 2007 12:40 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Noise
For many enthusiasts upgrading cooling the goal is maximum stable overclock, and they will live with the inconvenience of a louder system. For other users silence is the most important factor, and these users will forgo maximum overclocking if this increase system noise levels. In general the Zalman 9500 and 9700 can be considered very quiet, but performance of either cooler is not standout against the competition - at least where noise is concerned.To test idle and load noise levels, the Zalman fan controller was used to dial in the lowest and highest fan speeds the fan could achieve. Lowest speed results are reported as idle and high speed results are reported as stress noise. These are procedures that we plan to use, if possible, in future CPU cooler reviews. Both sets of results will be reported if there is a significant difference in low-sped and high-speed noise.
There are virtually no power supplies that do not have a fan. While Zalman and a few others do make a few expensive fanless power supplies, we have not seen a fanless unit larger than 500W, or one that would be used for seriously overclocking a system. With that in mind the noise level of the system with all fans turned off except the power supply was measured. The power supply used for the cooling test bed was the OCZ PowerStream 520, which is one of the quieter of the high performance power supplies. The noise level of the power supply was 38.3dB from 24" (61cm) and 47dB from 6" (152mm). The measured noise level of the test room is 36.4dB, which would be considered a relatively quiet room with a noise floor slightly below the OCZ PowerStream 520 PSU.
Measured noise levels in this chart should be considered worst case. Measurements were taken with an open side of a mid tower case 6" from the open HSF and 24" from the open HSF. Real world would be a completely closed case with a further reduction in noise.
Zalman, silence and low-noise all go hand-in-hand in the mind of most computer users, so Zalman is expected to be the standard against which others are measured. Put another way, noise is an area where Zalman is expected to top the charts. The Zalman 9500 and 9700 both exhibited noise levels below the system floor at idle speeds measured 6" and 24" from the cooler. This is typical performance with most of the heatpipe towers we have tested in recent weeks.
However, when pushed to the highest speeds available under stress conditions, the noise levels of the 9500 and 9700 were average at best. Neither Zalman was particularly quiet at high speed, and the 9700 was one of the noisiest coolers we have tested in the lab at 2800 RPM - 3db is twice the sound energy of the Tuniq Tower 120 at high speed and almost as loud as the Monsoon II Lite which is plagued by buzzing and clicks from fan switching. On low speed the 9500 and 9700 are very quiet, as are most heatpipe towers, but higher fan speeds yield much higher noise.
The measurements we made are also what you will get with either Zalman, since the fans are custom and embedded in the Zalman design. Zalman did not design the fans to be replaced with other 92mm (common size) or 110mm (Uncommon size fans). All-in-all the Zalman 9500 and 9700 were competitive with other tested coolers in noise levels, but they were not stand-out in any way. This is a reflection of how far the competition has come in addressing noise concerns in the PC environment.
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Operandi - Monday, February 19, 2007 - link
Yes 10dBA (not 3) is generally perceived as twice as loud.3dBA is double the sound energy but because the scale is logarithmic doubling the energy is not heard to the human ear as twice as loud. For example two 9700s would be 3dBA louder then one but would not be considered twice as loud.
jcarle - Monday, February 19, 2007 - link
The person who wrote the article is an idiot... why? Because the CNPS9700 has been available for purchase for MONTHS. It is NOT a new product...Wesley Fink - Monday, February 19, 2007 - link
The 9500 has been available for quite a while. We first saw the 9700 announced in late October/early Novermber. It was shown by Zalman at CES in early January and we reported the 9700 in our CES coverage and provided pictures.wolf68k - Monday, February 19, 2007 - link
...from that review. They showed how effective the Zalman, and others, are at cooling for both idle and stress. They also showed coolers noise levels at high and slow speeds. But they didn't show how effective they are at cooling for those various speeds.I use to have a Thermaltake Volcano 12+. At high speed it was very good at cooling, but loud as hell. At the lowest speed it was very quiet but the cooling sucked, I got better cooling with the stock cooler. And there's my point. The Tuniq Tower 120 showed to be a better cooler than the Zalman, but that's at high speed and where it's loud as hell. So how good is it compared to the Zalman, and the other coolers, at each of their lowest speeds?
Operandi - Monday, February 19, 2007 - link
The 9700 and 9500 both do very well with their fans running at reduced speed, you can take a look in this http://www.frostytech.com/articleview.cfm?articlei...">FrostyTech review. You'll see that there is a relatively small penalty in performance with the fan at at it's lowest setting and relatively little gain in performance at highest.These heatsinks are not designed for the overclocker they designed for low noise/performance cooling.
strikeback03 - Monday, February 19, 2007 - link
Any idea why the Tuniq seems to be out-of-stock pretty much everywhere? I have purchased all my other components except a cooler.For an E6600 running near stock X6800 speeds at most, am I correct in assuming one of the Zalmans would provide cooling reasonably close to the Tuniq, as they are actually available?
LoneWolf15 - Monday, February 19, 2007 - link
When your cooler is considered the best, and for reasonable prices (at least in the realm of air cooling), your product remains in demand.Best bet --put a watch on the product at NewEgg, when it comes in stock, they'll e-mail you. That's what I did, fortunately it was in within 24-48 hours. Otherwise, FrozenCPU might have it.
If you're running stock speeds with a Core2 Duo/Quad, there is little reason to buy a fancy cooler, you might as well stick with stock. I'd advise looking into ways to keep the ambient temperature of your case down through better fans instead; if that's not an issue, then why spend the $50-60?
JarredWalton - Monday, February 19, 2007 - link
Try http://www.xpcgear.com/tuniqtower120.html">these guys Or just look at http://froogle.google.com/froogle?hl=en&q=%22t...">Froogle.strikeback03 - Monday, February 19, 2007 - link
I did end up buying one from one of the Froogle companies I had never heard of. Kinda odd though that most of the links from Froogle are OOS though, and following the "Find the lowest prices" link in the Tuniq review eventually states that the item is no longer available.The room the computer will be used in will likely see temperatures over 30C, which is why I want a cooler which keeps the CPU as close to ambient as possible for a reasonable price.
yyrkoon - Monday, February 19, 2007 - link
Final page, conclusion. Paragraph 2, and 4 both have 'that', that should be 'than'. I will assume this is DNS acting a 'fool' again :)