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Today I finally managed to spare some time installing my Zalman 7000Cu heatsink. I’ve done it on a MSI Neo2 Platinum and an AMD64 3200+, and I have to say that the difference is quite remarkable. More on that later.

The process would have been quite straightforward were not for the stock backplate coming already on the MSI, which, though nice and solid, has to be removed in order to use the Zalman. It comes glued to the board so, following some advice I read in a forum, I heated it with a hair dryer and it came off easily. Then I stuck the fan controller inside one of the front 3 1/2 bays, where it is accesible.

Running at full load (100% CPU usage by SETI@home) for a long time, with no overclocking, sets the processor at 45.0 degrees Celsius. Which is not great but will get better as soon as I get the case fans I’m buying in a couple of days. And anyway it is already some 4 to 5 degrees better than before with the stock AMD heatsink and fan. Not to talk of noise which has been noticeably reduced.

So I am quite happy.

1. Zalman website: [link]
2. Zalman reviews: [google link?]

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2005 at 1:25 am and is filed under Hardware. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.