discussion remember when Zalman released their first cooler that looked like this?

[Marzipan]

it was the mid to late 2000's I think, and it blew everyone's minds. it was solid copper and didn't have any cowling like this one does, but boy, was it forward thinking.

ZALMAN Launches ZET 5 Circular Side-Flow CPU Cooler for High TDP

ZALMAN has released a new CPU cooler called the ZET 5, which takes design cues from jet engines. The cooler features a circular shape with dual 120mm fans placed on the front and back, making it a side-flow cooler aimed at delivering effective heat dissipation while maintaining a visually...

www.guru3d.com

 

[CMetaphor]

I still have Three different classic Zalman coolers! One e/w circular cooler, one downdraft circular cooler that's smaller, and a Zalman "flower" Chipset heatsink .

I'm weird. I collect these things. Sorry.

 

[moocow]

I seen them but never really worked with them. Good riddance I say because it's not serviceable since the fan can't be replace with a regular 120mm, need to buy a replacement off eBay.

 

[freeagent]

I liked Zalman until I tried my first Thermalright.. never looked back

 

[CMetaphor]

I liked Zalman until I tried my first Thermalright.. never looked back

Oh, I agree! The collector in me hasn't stopped with old Zalman stuff either! I've still got a Thermalright IFX-14! Complete with the ridiculous back-of-cpu heatsink and complicated brackets to hold it all together. If I could find fan clips that would work with it (haven't tried in years) I'd love to use in a modern builds. AM5 probably wouldn't work, but AM4 would, I think.

Maybe with all the weird BTF features people are adding, someone will bring back a heatsink that cools the back of the CPU socket? Who knows haha

 

[FreeKnight]

Zalman's stuff always looked neat, but never seemed to compete on performance.

Memex used to have a wide variety of their flower style coolers IIRC.

 

[Caldezar]

Remember when Zalman made a prototype CPU cooler that drew 1400W on it's own? It was back in the days when it was acceptable to use a pack of smokes as a size comparable.

I believe it was only ever meant to serve as an expanded view of the smaller version, but it was fully functional and briefly purchasable as a bit of a publicity stunt. Reports were that it even came with instructions on how to daisy chain PSU's to run it, since nobody was making PSU's even remotely capable of running it.

 

[Bond007]

The only Zalman cooler I ever owned was on my 3570k (later swapped to a 3770) build. The optima (was a fairly standard 120mm tower).

 

[Lysrin]

I'm 90% sure I still have a Zalman GPU cooler around somewhere. Maybe way back on an old ATI GPU.

 

[Shadowarez]

i remeber this spent $90 on it to cool my rig anyone remember that Zalman cooler that had a liquid inside with nanoparticles it looked wild didnt work any better then a $20 cooler but it looked cooler lol

this beast Reserator 3 Max lol