Installation Examined:

   This kit was not just a breeze to install - it was a joy. Honestly installation took me less than five minutes and everything just simply worked.

Testbed Comparison:

      My original testbed was an AMD XP platform and many thanks to Gigabyte - it did not have the regulation Socket A mounting holes. Wonderful. Lucky me gets to order up a new testbed. Again - thanks to Gigabyte- it did not feature the regulation Socket 754 back plate. Luckily for me Zalman provided a replacement for just this situation. So the new testbed was quite a dandy with a AMD 3300+ Sempron, Palermo core. Unfortunately the new 90nm chip runs ridiculously cool... I mean RIDICULOUSLY cool. So I can only offer a slight load to this cooling kit.

Using the stock heatsink shown here the processor only reached 35°c under full load at an approximate room temperature of 25°c. The specific board would not boot when over-volting the processor and even under a 500MHz overclock the heat output barely wavered.

Results:

Conclusion:

      With all that said - the Zalman system is designed to replace air-cooling systems with comparable cooling performance. Designed for ease of use for first-time water coolers the kit is not necessarily geared for high performance water cooling. Much to my amazement the Zalman Reserator 1 outperformed the stock heat sink on this very cool chip. Room temperature was kept as close to a steady 25°c as possible and the test environment had constant air movement. Obviously if you stuff the Reserator under your desk or in a stuffy corner you can expect different performance gradients.