Manufacturer: Zalman
Price: $54.95 (MSRP)

If you haven't heard of Zalman's CNPS line of coolers, you must have been hiding under a rock the past few years. If you haven't even heard of Zalman, get help. Zalman's ingenious cooling solutions are world-renowned for being both efficient and effective. Always an adopter of new technology, Zalman has outfitted the latest revisions of the CNPS line of CPU coolers with heatpipes.



The CNPS8000 can be considered the little brother of the high-performing, and huge, CNPS9500 that Simon reviewed. This low-profile cooler should be finely suited for those of us with cases with low clearance above the CPU area. Smaller coolers usually cannot perform as well as taller tower-type coolers which have a greater surface area to their advantage. However, maybe the CNPS8000's heatpipes will compensate for the lack of surface area... only testing will tell.