At this point the Zalman CNPS9500 bowed out. It was able to prime the Opteron 146 up to 2.90 Ghz but was unable to maintain prime stability any further while using the CNPS9500 - consider this that it was a closed case environment. We've seen results showing the Zalman CNPS9500 excelling on an open bench, I don't consider an open bench environment a computer - it needs to be in a closed case for me to really accept cooling figures. Regardless of the closed case environment, the Big Typhoon and Freezer 64 Pro pushed forward. The Big Typhoon and the Arctic Cooler Freezer 64 Pro managed to battle it out both pulling off the same maximum stable overclock! In any case the Zalman, while being a fine cooler, just could not match the cooling abilities of the Big Typhoon or the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro on our particular system.

3DXtreme