Zalman CNPS9500-LED cooler
Just to let you know that I have just fitted a Zalman CNPS9500-LED cooler to my P4C800-E Dlx and it required only a few mods:
- Soldering of the CT-479 power connection directly to the adapter (as it snags the heatsink support bracket).
- Removing the CT-479 jumpers. I now run with no jumpers set. (This may or make not be required - I already had it done).
- Hack-sawing the supplied Zalman bolts in half (at standard length you'll be penetrating the adapter before you get good tension on the heatsink!)
- A CPU die shim made of four squares of Paxmate sound deadening material. (Highly recommended to avoid die damage)
With the above mods, the cooler will fit no problems using the standard P4 retention bracket.
Load temps have gone from 60 C to 43 C at 1.456v (real). Also, because the fan exhausts the hot air directly towards the case exhaust fans - case temps have gone down from 30 C to 25 C (21 C ambient).
Throttling the fan speed down to 45% with Speedfan when the temp is under 42 C yields a very quiet fan. Make no mistake though, at 100% this cooler is loud! However with Speedfan, this is only needed while hammering the CPU.
This cooler is so good that it can even run passively (fan stopped) for 40 C idle and 55 C load, at least with my case (Thermaltake Xaser III).
What is very important with these coolers (which aren't natively meant to fit the CT-479) is that you get good contact with the die. To test this, fit the cooler and boot the machine into the bios and use the hardware monitoring feature to check your temp. If it is over 50 deg, shutdown the machine immediately and reseat. If it is nice and low gently rock and hold the cooler in all four side directions (N, S, E, W). If any of these directions yields a better temperature, you haven't got good contact yet. You can also test a fifth direction by pushing the cooler directly down on to the socket, again, this should not yield better temperatures if you already have a good contact.
System spec:
P4C800-E Dlx (with 1023 bios) + CT-479 + Dothan 730 @ 2.6Ghz w/ Zalman CNPS9500-LED cooler
2GB Corsair XMS TWINX CAS3.0 in 4 x 512 DIMMS
HIS X850XT PE /w IceQ cooling @ stock
36GB Raptor main drive + 200GB Samsung Spinpoint store
Thermaltake Xaser III