ZEROtherm ZT-10D Premium CPU Cooler (Page 1)

Introduction

ZEROtherm is a company that has been coming up with unusual concepts and designs in the pursuit of the ultimate in cooling and style. One major style was to inset the fan into the front of the fins, and they had good success with those. I also saw a fan set in the middle of the fins in a Core92 cooler. Along with the Nirvana PWM, this design uses any fan of your choice to be strapped up to cool the latest submission.

That's right; the cooler will ship to your door without a fan. Have no fear; ZEROtherm boasts this cooler can handle up to 200W of CPU load before it feels any ill effects. ZEROtherm did ship a fan along with my sample, and I was surprised to see they shipped a 43 CFM ZT-120F fan to cool the new entrant. I realize silence is a main concern for most, but a 40 CFM fan isn't typically capable of much real help in cooling a tower cooler. So, if in fact I can produce good results with said fan, it will prove that the cooler is indeed efficient.

Today I am going to be discussing the ZT-10D from ZEROtherm. This is a more typical tower style cooler, but adds style and grace along with the capabilities of the cooler. Utilizing six, "U" shaped, 8mm heatpipes running through a very dense array of aluminum fins, with good case airflow, the ZT-10D should be very capable of cooling a processor passively. If you plan to overclock, I suggest a fan. Even clocking my i7 860 to 4GHz is calculated to draw 230 Watts at full load, so if you are on extreme clocks you could saturate this cooler in a passive installation. Since they were nice enough to send the fan along, I am going to do my testing with it in place to give you a better feel for how the cooler will react in most setups.