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Shape can be attractive. Shape can be colored in to become even more attractive. More colors ad even greater attractiveness and sometimes even take off some weight. What we are talking about here is a bimetal design used in the Zalman CNPS7000-AlCu. Approximately 1/3 lighter than its all-copper brethren, slightly stiffer and featuring a somewhat idiosyncratic color scheme, the CNPS7000 AlCu could be the new champion in the cooling arena. And then, you put it upside down, power up the fan and try to beat the new level of UT2003...

Sorry, those are just a few things that came to mind looking at the CNPS7000 AlCu. The real question is, how does it compare against its all-copper companion?

Zalman CNPS7000-AlCu after differential cloud rendering in Photoshop
In reality, the "flower heatsink" is as cool as it looks in this picture

One issue, though, and that one is completely beyond the specs or recommendations of Zalman, is the fact that the heavy weight is prohibitive of modding the cooler to fit stable on any AMD processor, the weight and the small area of contact would combine to enough leverage to break most sockets. In case a mainboard with mounting holes is used, the situation could be somewhat different but most boards do not even offer this luxury anymore.

One potential way out of the weight dilemma is to substitute aluminum for copper. Aluminum has a lower heat conductance and, more importantly, also a lower thermal capacitance, meaning that heat spikes will not be buffered as effectively as with a copper heatsink. The solution in a case like that is to use a hybrid design, that is combine the copper core with aluminum in the periphery which has the additional benefit that aluminum dissipates heat more quickly than copper.

Hybrid designs, such as mentioned above are especially effective if the area of contact between the die and the heatsink is relatively small, in this case, the high thermal capacitance and conductance can be used to basically suck the heat off the processor and then redistribute it to the aluminum. In case of the P4 with its integrated heatspreader, this particular aspect is of negligible value, though. This leaves heat capacitance and dissipation as the primary factors. To reiterate, copper has better capacitance, whereas aluminum has better heat dissipation.

CNPS and what it stands for

We mentioned it in our previous review already but for the record, here is the information once again from the Zalman website:

CNPS (Computer Noise Prevention System) is a system that cuts traditional computer system's noise of 30dB or higher to 20dB or lower, which is below what a normal user can usually notice.

CNPS is achieved with Zalman's world first technologies such as CPU & VGA FHS (Flower HeatSink), which has shorter heat conductance path and surface area that is 3 to 10 times as large as traditional coolers, and NP(Noise Prevention) Fans.

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