ZEROtherm Zen FZ120 CPU Cooler Review

[PrOLifIC_onE]

ZEROtherm focuses on cooling products, such as CPU coolers, VGA coolers and high performance thermal grease. Their focus has led to top-notch products in all the previously mentioned areas. They have broke of out of the OEM market and, without question, earned the respect of computer enthusiasts and the cooling industry. Last October the release of the Nirvana CPU cooler rocked our socks off. The Nirvana did such a fantastic job we were ecstatic to get the opportunity to test the new Zen FZ120 on our new cooling test bench. But how does he stack up against his big brother and many other fine competitors?

ZEROtherm Zen FZ120 CPU Cooler Review

This is the first of a handful of coolers that have been tested with our new equipment and methodology.

[Parker]

Excellent review Matt!!

Man there are a lot of good coolers on the market, so many that it's hard to choose which one is the right one..... But this is where the reviews come in, again Great job!

[PrOLifIC_onE]

This is the best one on the bench so far. It does seem to come down to personal preference now. Just about all the top tier coolers do the job very well. After that it will come down to preference, which may be cost or flashiness or something else, totally dependent on the user.

But be ready for a variety in our reviews, they will not all be top tier in the cooling department...

[azianai]

as soon as parker gets me the TRUE Black, i'll throw it on and we'll see if its worth the $$ too hehe.

[Capper]

We'll have a TRUE in short order for review.

[Parker]

Originally Posted by azianai

as soon as parker gets me the TRUE Black, i'll throw it on and we'll see if its worth the $$ too hehe.

Since it's lapped the temps will more than likely be better than a stock Black TRUE, so keep that in mind when you test and compare results to the review when it comes. (see below)

Originally Posted by Capper

We'll have a TRUE in short order for review.

Cool beans! I'll look forward to that.

[IC Diamond 7]

Good stuff, great review -Just curious about about Fan speed on your testing. do you disable the Intel PWM (?) software for the test and run flat out 12V or is it still enabled?

[simple_inhibition]

excellent review! im totally digging the new testbed as well

[PrOLifIC_onE]

Originally Posted by IC Diamond 7

Good stuff, great review -Just curious about about Fan speed on your testing. do you disable the Intel PWM (?) software for the test and run flat out 12V or is it still enabled?

Good question and PWM was [strike]not[/strike] disabled. This is something I should do in the future, to see what kind of temps I get while it is enabled and disabled.

Edit: I mistyped, the CPU fan speed was set to manual.

[IC Diamond 7]

I am always looking for reasons why people might not see a thermal result with the IC diamond paste with good progress on the contact side of it, but with a couple of outliers outstanding I have been thinking about, this was just a long shot idea I had an not sure if it has any merit or not

The temp of the diode controls the fan speed, so if the cpu is cooler the fan speed would slow down in response, in effect allowing the cpu temp to catch up temp wise to a baseline sink comparison. Make sense? I don't know if that actually is what happens just a thought

And how would resetting or calibrating the temps under hardware monitor vs real temp and others affect the PWM duty cycle?

I am guessing from the Intel docs ranges are stepped either 5 or 10C increments or is there more flexibility like 2 or 3 C?.

I suppose that you would only see that if you happened to be straddling ranges on the before and after result?