Date:
Thursday , November 18, 2010
Author:
Marc Adams
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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ZEROtherm ZT-10D CPU Air Cooler Review

ZEROtherm is back on our review pages touting a CPU air cooler that exceeds expectations in R&D, Design and Production. It says it has a 300 watt capable cooler that is the most optimized for Hexa and Quad-core processors. With more heatpipes than we can shake a stick at, let's see how the ZT-10D actually performs.

Introduction

ZEROtherm is not a name we have mentioned in quite some time around here. It’s not that we have excluded the company from our party. It’s that ZEROtherm decided not to show up, so to speak. It has been a long time since it last released a CPU cooler. That is disappointing to say the least given how well the ZEROtherm product performed in the past. You don’t often find many companies sitting on its laurels but in this case it’s clear that ZEROtherm was riding its flagship cooler as long as it could. Thankfully ZEROtherm is back and ready to grab some of the spotlight away from the big boys. Does it have another unique cooler like their NV120 up its sleeve? Actually, no. ZEROtherm have a standard tower cooler with a boat load of heat pipes and fins sans any fan to be found. A bold move given how long the company has been missing in action. Let’s see what ZEROtherm ZT-10D has on tap.

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System Setup

Today's testing will occur within our NZXT Tempest EVO case. The test bed still consists of the GIGABYTE X58-Extreme motherboard, six gigabytes of Corsair DDR3 RAM and the Intel Core i7 920.

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Test Methods

CPU

In keeping with the spirit of the [H] we are once again doing hardware testing of all heat sinks. This means milling a very small path into an expensive CPU to place our thermocouple into. This is by far the best way to test coolers and the only way here at the HardOCP.

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Temperatures for the CPU will continue to be measured using our Sperry Digital 4 Point thermometer.

GPU

For this article the GPU will be kept at stock speed to keep any excess heat away from the CPU that could impact the results. In 2D mode the 9500 GT generates very little heat and to further isolate it from the rest of the system we will install it in the secondary PCIE slot.

Thermal Paste

Noctua's NT-H1 thermal paste was selected as the paste of choice for a few key reasons. The thermal paste has been shown to provide excellent thermal conductivity allowing the heat sinks to better do their job. There is no observed curing time. That is, performance does not get any better over time. Any curing time could have introduced variables into the equation causing at best dubious results and at worst unreliable ones. Our channel milled CPU also requires a compound that is more viscous so the mating compound will not seep into the channel and run off.

Temperatures

Ambient temperature will be kept at 25C for the duration of the tests and measured with a MicroTemp EXP non-contact infrared thermometer and cross referenced with the Sperry Digital 4 Point thermometer. Any variance greater then 0.2C will halt the testing until temperatures return within spec for fifteen minutes.

Idle

Idle temperatures will be recorded after a twenty-five minute period of inactivity. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.

Load

Load temperatures will be recorded after a twenty-five minute period of 100% load. To obtain this load we will be using Prime95 v25.3 set to blend mode. In this way we can heat up the CPU as well as the memory controller which is now integrated into the die. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.

Sound

Sound levels will be measured with a Reliability Direct AR824 sound meter from a distance of four feet away. With everything turned off and the room completely silent the meter registered a sound level of 38dB(A). This is a very quiet room where a simple pin drop could be heard. All sound measurements are recorded in the very late evening to further reduce any ambient noise.