And how does a preview where what is allowed to be said is controlled by a manufacturer differ from an advertisement exactly? People have repeatedly said "some testing would be nice instead of fluff" and you have repeatedly said "we can't do that".

No Bill, i did not mean to quote you, i just needed the "quote" function, my bad..

Boy, you're just going to keep bringing that up, aren't you?

Yes, I can tell, by looking at the innards of a block, if the design is worthy, or if it's a complete waste of milling effort. It really doesn't take a genius to recognize that the design of the block in question, is a very good one: in case you missed it, JayDee's Lemon block is of a similar design, and is an excellent performer. Hoot's "Pin Fin" turned in excellent numbers, or did you forget that you reviewed that one?:rolleyes:

Just for kicks, and for the sake of remembering the "better times", I just went over the thread of the Radius design, again (linked in sig).

Out of all the NH crew, only three tried watercooling, and they gave up. So relatively speaking, yes, I am their water cooling "expert", even if I have yet to finish my own system. They gave me the title, I didn't pick it.


JayDee: the thing is, you really can't do much to a heatpipe, once it's put together, so if any product that uses them comes out, all we can do is watch it. It's not going to outperform anything, no fanless heatpipe solution will: this product is strictly about complete silence, so what's left to ask is: will it perform well enough, without compromising the processor?

As far as I can tell, Zalman has pushed everything to the limits, in eliminating noise, but the performance is definitely not enviable. From my perspective, this case is more of a package of all Zalman efforts. Adding the smallest of fans would probably have a significant impact!

yea you're right Bill; we are being trolled. Just imagine for a moment if Ben's post were replaced with succulent bosoms.

aaaah

Okay, this is Martin from Nordichardware. I am the one that wrote the preview, and I must say that I am a bit upset about what I have read.

I got a call from a distributor in sweden with good contact with Zalman, and they asked if I was interested in writing a review of it.
I immidiatly said yes, and the day that I got it I got a call saying that I was not allowed to make any performance tests because it was only a prototype. I had two choices, either to skip the preview completely or to write it and skip any performance data.
Since I though that many people would be interested in reading my opinions and view some pictures of it, I wrote a large preview where I tried to write everything that I could about the case.
It was obviously a good choise because many people where happy with it and loved reading it.

The only thing that I was not allowed to do was to test the performance, but that does not make it an advertisement. The product IS very good, that should not stop me from posting the preview should it?
I wrote just about every negative aspect that I could think of in that review, the weight, the price, the usage of different size screws, the restriction of natural airflow and so on.

Zalman has thought about nearly everything in this case, so there was not much negative to write about it. Does that make me a bad previewer? Should I concentrate on writing reviews/previews on bad products?

I did not get to keep the case, I did not recieve any money or other priveligies when writing this review and we have no ads/cooperations with Zalman at the moment so how can this review be written in any other purpouse than to share information with the hardware community out there?

And pHaestus, you make it sound as if Zalman controlled our every word. We got one instruction: Do not publice any performance data until the final product is done. Now you may say what you think about Zalmans decision to do that, but do not look down at us because we want to share information with the community.

An advertisement would not contain any bad aspects of the case, if it looked a bit like an ad it could have been because the case actually is a good product?

I'm actually kind of sad about all this, I set aside every project that I had going for five days (girlfriend, modding, other reviews, school) which made my life a bit tougher the days after since I had to work that up, I didn't get to see my girlfriend that week and I get complaints because I took good pictures and reviewed an interesting product, and you write these comments without any hard facts to look down on it?

Hey fair enough Martin. I apologize for anything I said that was perceived as insulting to you. Such was not my intention. If I had been sent a case and then told that I couldnt post performance numbers, then I would have put a teaser up in our forums to get discussion going and to see what sort of tests people would want to have run. That's just my approach though and doesn't necessarily make the nordic hardware "preview everything and then write a review later" approach a bad one. If what you are doing makes you happy then by all means keep it up. Some actually enthused enthusiasts would be a nice change of pace.

I am pretty clearly not ANYONE'S target audience as when I write reviews and articles they are full mostly of useless info and technical gobbledygook. That's why you guys post the big page hits and I just sit here and snipe and whine.

So don't take what I say too seriously.

Well just because I run the site doesnt mean I will stand back and let people post crap and not get their ass chewed if it's nothing more than web fluff. Yeh I run a website, but I also am a customer of many websites, and call "bullshit" when I see it.

The fact procooling isnt a business for me, its just something that happens in the background of my normal life gives me little pause when speaking out about some thing. As pH posted, we have pissed off thousands of people in the past, including hundreds of webmasters. But EVERY single bitch and gripe has been done to the benifit of the readers of that site. Asking for more detail, asking for less PR fluff, and trying to get websites to function indepedently of corporate Marketing depts. But when thats done, the readers of that site freak out cause as I have found... the general web population seems to be prefectly happy being sold to the highest bidder and marketing companies when it comes to paid reviews, and results.

I called bullshit because I dont even believe you have the Zalman in your possession. You had not one peice of info in the review that didnt seem straight from zalmans PR handouts. All the pics looked like ZAlman PR shots also. MANY MANY sites have posted reviews and "previews" about items that they dont even have. Just got some pics from the MFG and posted the info the mfg gave them. Your site from the past works doesnt have the credibility for anyone to think what you post is true or the real deal. Please prove me wrong on the alegations.

It is a damn fine peice of advertisement though I am guessing Zalman is awful happy.

possibly the only constructive post in this thread (?);
when you get one you can test and report on, give it a go

Joe you'll get nowhere with arguing with Ion. He's best left on the ignore list.

Martin perhaps you could take a picture of the Zalman prototype with your hand giving us the finger as well? That should satisfy Joe :)

Something I'd much rather discuss with you people, is this:

This case is sure to quiet, or to be on the safe side, more quiet than most other cases. The performance we do not know yet, but we can guess that it won't rock your world.

So, why don't we cut this shit and try to think of ways to improve it? I'll go first and then you can follow if you like to.

From what I have learned, what's limiting the performance here should be:
(a. the transfer of heat from the source of heat to the side panels. Also, the side panels may be too warm to make the difference in temperatures big enough to produce good performance. That lead us in on;
(b. the heatsinks on the sides maybe aren't large or good enough.

I think you can see what I mean, though it might not be the 100% scientific truth. You are more than welcome to add or correct.

I can think of ways to deal with these problems:
(a. Improve on the transfer by using peltiers, watercooling (from heat source to side panels) or a compressor (same there).
The case could probably not handle peltiers, but what do I know. What I find interesting though would be a very silent compressor, the source of heat does not have to be -40 degrees celsius, +30 would be rather good compared to a lot of other cooling solutions. Using a waterpump could probably also provide a better and silent solution.
(b. The solutions above are written thinking that the side panels can actually handle the extra stress, perhaps they cannot, perhaps they can. A way to improve performance would be to increase the surface area of the heatsinks on the sides. Adding fans should work just as good of course, but remember the goal being a silent case.

Now, I may be totally wrong, but I think that this is a good way of dealing with news.
If you prefer to discuss what I just wrote here instead of us having this endless battle, I'd be more than happy to learn more about the case, and hopefully we will be able to provide the people out there with a better review when we write one.
What do you say?

That's exactly the kind of personal attack that's driving people away from here (but hey, what do I know!).

I think pHaestuis is on the right track: we all need a better sense of humor. ;)


I think Zalman ought to have concentrated on fitting a fan, and isolating that noise, instead of (or as well as) going with a massively large heatsink.

I have three comments:

1) we are whiny elitist pricks with nothing worthwhile to contribute until you need something and then we are supposed to just work together? Well...ok sure sounds like a good idea! We can improve your reviews and you can shit all over us in your comments!

2) There's the law of conservation of something or other at work when you try to cool the heatpipes by using TECs or water or phase change on the outside of the case. If you think about it, if it were possible to use TECS or phase change or water silently to cool the load delivered by the heatpipes, then one would not use the heatpipes and enormous aluminum case in the first place. One would just directly use the superior cooling silently. We've seen many times that this doesn't work acceptably. And so you are stuck with fans and then introducing noise. This totally negates any advantage of the Zalman case over the quiet watercooled rig I am currently running. I would start if temps are high by just pointing a box fan at the case :)

3) This brings up some interesting review questions that I had when looking at this case.
a) What about the really hot bits on motherboards that don't contain heatsinks and that are normally cooled by airflow? MOSFETS are a prime example. Some motherboards now have heatsinks for these but many do not and rely on exhaust fans. There are a lot of other hotspots (70C+ in normal cases with air cooling) on motherboards that will run at god knows what temperature now. Is this only a problem with overclockers? Not sure.
b)Prescott CPUs are said to push 100-120W STOCK next year; are readers buying another Kryotech case (extremely expensive solution that doesn't really travel with them to the next generation of chips). That's a lot of heat for a passive heatpipe solution. This goes directly to Bill's question: what is the heat capacity for each component?
c) How difficult is it going to be to actually test this case when all the cooling is supplied by air moving around the case? Wouldn't any change in not just air temperature but also air current and direction affect temps of all the components? Hell trying to get stable radiator temperatures with fans is a pita; this sounds much more difficult to me.

I haven't got the case in my possession now, but I can give you an unedited picture of the case that I found in my temp-folder that I used during the review. I have plenty of these, so if you need more to trust me just post a link and I'll upload them :)
The images are at http://www.nordichardware.se/noddis/proof.jpg
http://www.nordichardware.se/noddis/proof2.jpg

When I get the real case I'll try to measure the temperature gradiants that occur, the temperature of the individual blocks and the heatpipe to see how efficient the system really is. I'll have to read your posts again to make sure that I didn't miss any question. Anyway, there's some images for you :)

seems quite clear that Martin did actually have a unit

but I am appaled at the number of low-grade thermal interfaces that will be involved in each heat path
- truly terrible efficacy to be expected
this box will need to be left out in the snow

Cool Thanks Noddan, I am VERY happy to be proven wrong on that part!

Great! Now let's discuss the design of the unit and keep the spirits up :)

The overclocker will probably not be very satisfied with this unit, due to the lack of forced airflow. The mosfets on my board (nf7-s 2.0) stays at approx 1-2 degrees above room temperature when running the CPU at default voltage (but how often does that occur? :D )
My mosfets maxed out at about 120 degrees when using 2.1V, and that was with fans running in the case. However, will this be a problem in this case?
At 2.1V the temperature of the side panels will be ridiculous, if the heatpipes manages to transfer that amount of heat. The southbridge, clockchip and graphic RAM will most likely become very hot if you overclock the system, and won't have a forced airflow to aid in cooling.

However, maybe the natural airflow will be enough to keep the heat from these components away during normal operation and slight overclocking?

The multiple "thermal breaks" may or may not be a problem, we all know that you loose some cooling capacity when having a thermal joint, no matter how good your TIM is. The question is how much. It will be very interesting to see some real performance data on the final unit.

Oops, got to go! I'll check back later!

What about the Easy Bake Oven aspect of the case? I figure since all the sides of the case are going to be actively heated from components, what's going to keep the air in the case from heating up like an oven since there's no fans?

Also... what's to stop high heat loads from the CPU from killing off the cooling of the HD, and infact could reverse the flow of heat back to the HD through the heat pipes. (since heat can move both ways depending which side is cooler and which is hotter). Wont all components on a given heat plane in the case be the same temp at some point due to heat moving back and forth as everything reaches equilibrium?

Ok, so if we don't know the performance how can we discuss how to make it better. For all we know it is perfect as is.

See last statment. All we will be doing is talking shit being we don't know anything about the performance of the thing. How can we talk about inproving it if we don't know how it works. it might not need improving.
How do you know whats limiting the performance if you don't know the performance in the first place?
Can't add or correct being we don't know what the thing is capable of yet.
First off do we even know if any mods are needed yet? No... Second doesn't adding fans, tecs and water cooling gear pretty much destroy any reason to buy this beast in the first place? All that stuff adds noise, which is NOT the reason to buy this expensive unit. I don;t think to many people are interested in spending a lot of cash on a case that promises silence only to have to drop another small fortune for noisy items to make the thing work well. But we don't even know if it works yet so who knows...
Skip the preview and to the review with performance numbers and then we can discuss the situation. :shrug:

Whats the point in specualting what may work better when we don't even know how it works to begine with.

But if specualtion is whats wanted then I don't understand how this company thinks they can make all these heat pipes work without some sort of fan. Even heat pipes need the heat removed. Natural convection isn't going to cut it. Fans will have to be added to make it work. As unregistered just pointed I think you will either have to run a undervolted and underclocked CPU or a Cyrix in order not to expect a melt down.

Also pH pointed out the mosfets and other parts that get extreamly warm on the mobo. Both my ABIT KD7 and ASUS A7V8X have 6 tiny mosfets that there is no way your getting a heat sink on being they are cramed in between caps and they are just to small. They are about the size of the black cap on the end of a ball point BIC pen. Also the mosfets on my two boards get over 60C while running stock. At least thats wht my DMM and thermal coupler tells me. The caps get about 10C over room temps as does some other things.

Maybe this is why they have been working on it for 6+ months and several revisions and NDA's to not say how the thing works.

in the auto world that case would be called a 'concept car'
built for show and its pr value (hello ?)

in this world I believe it will be called vaporware (but I may be wrong)
it is NOT just OCers that may find dissatisfaction with that case
try anyone with a premium CPU

all a heat pipe can do is move the heat,
dissipation is still a function of surface area and airflow velocity

JoeK is on the money, the inside of that case will be an oven

1) You prefer to whine instead of contributing? I was actually glad that you did contribute quite a _lot_ in the rest of your post though.

2) I didn't actually mean to cool the heatpipes, but rather to use the cooling (watercooling or compressor) like usual and instead of getting rid of the heat with a rad + fan, use the passive heatsinks on the TNN500A. Coupled with a quiet compressor or waterpump (if that can be done) that should work better?
I guess I wasn't clear enough, would you like me to try to get more into detail? (And no, I'm serious and not trying to own you =) )


3) Excellent, just what I was after. Thank you for the input and hopefully we'll be able to answer those questions in the review. I won't be able to talk for Martin, but he can do that on his own.

Just a thought, looked at my subwoofer (Logitech Z-680) and thought that it's cooled by rather small (compared to the TNN500A) passive heatsinks. Still, it is putting out 500W RMS (according to Logitech). Does that mean that the Zalman should be able to handle a computer, or that most of the power used by my subwoofer doesn't turn into heat?

A 500W speaker?

Speakers are different: they don't put out 500W constantly, and a lot of that energy is converted to a mechanical action.

Processors and other electronics can put out a fair amount of power, and even with peaks, will produce a significant amount of heat.


Bill's on the right track. Zalman ought to have concentrated on eliminating the heatpipes, but that would have made for a really odd shaped heatsink.

I still say that they ought to have concentrated their efforts on silencing a fan. A few padded baffles (muffler style) ought to do it.

Contribute to what is what I havn't figured out yet. First Ben asks for comments on the preview, then askes for comments on the product, then you ask how to do the preview better, then you ask how to make the product better (without even knowing if it works or not). I am not whining either BTW. These are my opinions.
That will not work. I tested my Little Giant 170GPH pump with no fans turned on on the rad and the water crept up 20C over ambient. And thats just the PUMP, not including any other heat input. There HAS to be airflow to remove heat. Last time I checked air doesn't move to well by itself. :D Could be wrong though. It would take one massive passive heat sink just to keep the water cool from the pump only. A heater core sure didn't do it so I highly doubt the sinks on this thing, especially with the added heat load of whatever the loop is supposed to be cooling, will do it. And there isn't a pump on the planet that runs silent. Even the quietest pumps will be noisy in a spot where there is no other noise to blend into. I think a compressor is completely out of the question. Where to put it and how much more weight does this thing need. Not to mention they are not quiet and also require a fan and rad to work properly.

ok if this was in reference to me.

Also you cannot compare a subwoofer in this situation. A subwoofer does not handle 500W of heat consistantly. If it did it would catch fire.

Go get a 500watt heat lamp and grab it while after it has been on for an hour. Tell me how a little passive sink is going to cool that. (Discalimer: Do not really do this, sever burns can and will happen.) :D

Jaydee I am pretty sure ion was replying to my whining ass, as my post was numbered 1,2,3

Oh you CAN dissipate this heat with passive heatpipes all right. BUT AT WHAT TEMPERATURE DIFFERENTIAL?

This is the same sort of way that HWLabs get rated for heat dissipation I think; huge difference between the water and air. Will be same thing with components in the Zalman most likely.

I have a 1600+ XP that runs with a fan at 5V on it at 75-80C in the summertime. Case temps are low 40s. In that particular case I care more about silence than about cooling. We'll see how the Zalman system compares to just big heatsinks with 5V fans or better yet water cooling with a couple of 5V L1A or Stealth 120s.

Your sub is 188W RMS (checked the PDF, it looked too much for that type of woofer). The combined power with the sats and the woofer does 505W RMS. Very respectable pc sound. I want one :) .
5 cents on the subject:

Anyway. Take a memory module. It can consume up to 30W (usually <25W). It does however do it over all the smaller modules (usually 8x2) and with a large area by comparison to the consumption. It doesnt need extra cooling. The heatspreaders seen are just bling bling. You dont have the same on the zalman case. Your heat is concentrated on the lateral side, which doest have that much surface area , and even less airflow.

( I've had a very interesting problem when , back when i used sdram, the thermaltake heatspreaders on my 256mb module actually heated the module with the hot air from the heatsink. nasty stuff. Without them, it remained a bit cooler. )

In a subwoofer not all the wattage is directly converted to heat due to joule effect , and it's not continuous use. You are cooling mainly the power supply power diodes and/or regulators. Individually they can work happily at 120ºC without interfering too much with the stability of the rails (which matters). And each are spreaded though all the area of those sinks (which is not that small). They dont have to cool that much to maintain operation. They only have to cool enough. And the sinks are outside, in the open.

(http://www.bit-tech.net/review/266/2 , pikie)

In the pc, and referring to the zalman case, you can't have proper operation at 120ºC on any component... The MOSFET's can go to those temps, but the rail starts to go to crap. Same as hot air in the PSU . And inside the case there convection currents will stop at the top of the case (which i would suggest to be open , or at least heavily perfurated). You dont have this problem with the heatsinks on the Sub.

Assuming a very low airflow in a room , the zalman case would just overheat.

JoeK is right about the HDD thou. I had the displeasure of getting one for testing and it's just bad. It removes heat from the sides of the HDD ... to the sides of the HDD. If no air flow, no heat is properly removed, and it can work on reverse. The only thing that helped was when i removed the side panel. Interesting enough, it get the same results with no Heatpipe, and the HDD bolted to the case. Even if i should have larger area for dissipation. Then I tore it apart.

I can confirm the reviews that state that the heatpipes are poorly fitted, and no thermal paste exists between them and the HDD encasing. Just some crap glue. The contact is not very good.
Even with thermal paste (i had some Alumina leftovers) , without airflow, it's a mediocre cooler. Only with a fan it works properly. And with a fan and with and without heatpipes the difference isnt much, i got 2ºC due to larger surface area.

Yeah after I replied I realized he may not be refering to me. Didn't feel like deleting it all though as I feel it was usefull info.

Yes I agree is can be passivly cool. I was just using the unspoken guide lines we wanted our system to be somewhat opperational. T-breds and Bartons are only rated to like 85C now as opposed to 90+C they used to be. Not sure what the Athlon 64's and P4's rating are. I would not feel comfortable running over 60C continuously though. If you buy a freaking expensive case for your computer I would expect it to be able to handle full load temps from games and D.C. projects and multimedia apps.

This setup from Zalaman seems like a run for an hour and shut off for an hour type of thing. Sooner or later the heat is going to overwhelm the passive capabilities and start causing problems unless the room is air conditioned to chilly temp.

But this is specualtion. If we don't know what the thing can do we really can't say much. I assume they are on to something to have spent so much time and money developing this thing. Or maybe they are screwed and can't admit it to the boss. This whole send the prototype out might just be an attempt to keep the investors happy that something is being accomplished with their money. Maybe not. hard to say without some numbers to show it works or not.

hehehe, a Case with a CPU load Duty rating ;) hehehe "100% CPU load duty rating chart" with a curve setup for max watt output from the CPU ;)

Feel free to be an example of ideal forum member behavior.

Popping in here to complain, (Which, from what I've seen, seems to be all you've done lately.) is just contributing additional whining. When is the last time you answered a noob's question?

Seems to me you are just choosing to be 'part of the problem'.

The best i think Zalman could do is having a bigASS radiator on the top of the case, with no pump. Natural convencion would make hot water go to the radiator to be cooled.

I dont know about temps, but surely would be high (well depends on how BIG the radiator gets).

nope
google on 'thermosyphon'
they can be made to work, but never the way you have suggested