Zalman 7000CU vs Thermaltake Venus 12 for AMD64

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gamer1drew

Weaksauce
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Jul 17, 2004
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Hi, Sorry if this question or a similiar one has been asked, but Im thinking of getting an AMD 64 3200+ ClawHammer and OCing a little. Both HSF have great reviews and are similiarly priced with the Zalman being a little higher. I dont care about sound that much so which one cools better? Ive found reviews for the Zalman vs other P4 coolers or the Venus 12 vs the stock AMD 64 cooler but never one agaisnt the other. A link or just your experience with one or both would be great.
Also what is the recommended weight limit for HSF for the AMD 64? Reason I ask it both those are 700g+ and if the recomended is low I may go for the Zalman 7000AlCu because it is lighter (450g).
Thanks for any help.
 
Hey, I have a Zalman 7000AlCu. I just got the correct mounting hardware sent to me by Zalman (was installed on an Intel prior) and I have a Thermaltake Venus 12 on order with Xoxide.com. I will mount both this week and kick the tires and post my results here.

But I can say now the Zalman ain't light but I really don't see that as being an issue. Also, the Zalman does require the removal of the mobo whereas the Venus is a plug and play.
 
I have a Venus 12, it also weighs about as much as a brick!! The damn thing did move some serious air though, (5000rpm, 79CFM). The weight was never a problem the plastic clip and metal back plat held it on my A64 3000+ just fine. If you do get the Venus though, I recommend you lap it, I never did, but as I was taking it off I noticed I might have saved a degree or two if I had...

It cooled great, but loud as hell, I moved to water cooling, put the Venus 12 in the closet.


-V
 
My original HSF on my FX-51 was the Venus 12. It cooled well but was loud when set to high. I swapped it out with the Zalman 7000 Al-Cu and it did a pretty good job. Much quieter. I then swapped that out with the all copper version and it's been bliss since.

My latest build is an FX-53 with a Thermalright 948U. It's another heavy beast but you get to chose the fan size you want to use. Idle temps are close to the Zalman 7000A-Cu @ 45C with the Thermaltake variable speed 92mm fan @ 3600 RPM.

The Zalman's are that bad at all. Quiet and seem to cool well. I don't push my systems clock speed however.

[Edited to update the Thermalright temps now that the FX-53 is being clocked and powered via DriverHeaven 'fix']
 
Finally got the Venus 12 from Xoxide. Also, despite my mistype earlier the Zalman unit I have is the all copper version and not the aluminum/copper version.

I just installed the Venus 12 on Thursday so the Artec Silver hasn't had a proper chance to set yet but my initial impressions of the Venus 12 are I am not impressed. I want to give it a full week to see how much the temps come down. After that I will plug in the Zalman and compare.

So far, the stock heat sink gave me an idle of 53-54c out of the box and drooped to 49-50c-. The load was 63-64c out of the box and about 61-62c after a week. The Venus is giving an idle of 48-49c out of the box and a load of 60-61c

Assuming that the Venus does a 5c drop after a week it will only have gained 5c over stock and that is with the fan at full blast. And yes the fan is fucking loud. This the first cooling fan that I put in where I had to step back and think "is it really worth that racket?" If you do install this make sure you install the front mounted fan control knob because you will need it.

The other aspect that has non-plussed out of the gate is that with my P4 2.53/Asus P4PE the stock intel heat sink gave an idle of 45c and 54c under load. If memory serves right, the Zalman gave an idle of 38-39c and load of 47-48c. So a 5c drop for this volume seems a little weird.

Anyway, I will give till next Thursday and kick the tires on Zalman with this set-up.

Another strange thing I noticed is that Core Center reads the CPU temps 5 degrees higher than MBM 5 but both agree exactly on the system temp? What gives?

Side note, I am using BIOS v1.2. I have read on the MSI forums that version 1.3 solves the high temprature readings on this board. But 1.3 must be beta because Live Update doesn't find it.
 
Great, thanks for the followup. Will be looking forward to see how the Zalman performs.
 
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