Zalman CNPS14x CPU Cooler Review - It's....
**A Disappointing Experience with the Zman CNPS 140mm PWM Fan Cooler**
I recently had the misfortune of trying out the Zman CNPS 140mm PWM fan cooler, and I must say it was a thoroughly disappointing experience. The installation process was a nightmare, with the spring tension being too tight to even get into the top left corner. Even with my large hands, which are normally capable of handling most hardware installations, I found myself struggling to tighten down three out of four screws. The instructions were vague and unhelpful, leaving me feeling frustrated and helpless.
The cooler itself looked good, but that's about where its positive qualities ended. The noise it produced was atrocious, with the 140mm PWM fan seeming to scream like a banshee as it spun up from low to high speeds. I was shocked by how loud it was, especially considering that it was supposed to be a "low noise" cooler. In reality, it was anything but quiet, and I found myself having to turn up my music to even begin to drown out the sound of the fan.
But the real kicker was when I tried to install the cooler on my AMD rig. The fan seemed to have a mind of its own, wobbling violently even when I had tightened it down as tightly as humanly possible. It was like watching a seesaw in action, with the cooler oscillating back and forth in an annoying rhythm that drove me mad. I couldn't believe that such a simple product could be so fundamentally flawed.
Despite including some thermal grease and other goodies with the cooler, its numerous design flaws and poor performance made it clear that this was a product to avoid at all costs. As someone who has been installing CPU coolers for years, I can confidently say that this one is a mistake. Don't waste your money on this thing – there are far better options available.
**A Final Word of Caution**
In my opinion, the Zman CNPS 140mm PWM fan cooler was a complete and utter disappointment. Its poor design choices, combined with its high noise levels and frustrating installation process, make it a product that I would not recommend to anyone. Even if you're considering buying this cooler because of its good looks, think twice – there are far more attractive options available that won't drive you crazy with frustration.
I hope that my experience will serve as a warning to others who may be tempted by this product. If you value your sanity and want a smooth installation process, look elsewhere for your CPU cooling needs. The Zman CNPS 140mm PWM fan cooler is not worth the hassle – trust me, I know.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back to techs City and this is the dock coming back to you guys today with one of those reviews about the CN ps14 speed a zman 140 mm fan CPU Cooler now this thing is a strong strongly not recommended I do not recommend this unless you got it given to you for free even then the hassle and the pain of installing this thing might want might make you want to throw it in the bin so anyway this thing I'm going to quickly be reviewing doing this because I just don't want to spend too much time on it uh literally I couldn't even be bothered throwing up charts because I'm not going to recommend this cooler I'll just talk about the temps that I got on this when I was testing it when I was doing the AMD testing on this test bench here but ultimately let's talk about the positives because there's so many negatives to go through and there's so little positives I'll quickly mention the positives uh the first positive is that this CPU Cooler once it's installed after you finally get it installed it actually does look pretty good I mean it looks pretty big it looks good in your rig um I do like the styling of it uh the next good point is that it does cool reasonably well I mean it's better than the stock cooler for cooling performance once I got it installed it was uh I did an Ida 64 30 minute Benchmark and it was I think the ambient temperatures were 9° so it was really cold but I only managed to get it up to 29° so it was a 20° Delta at 4.4 gigs on the AMD CPU so it is about 20° and I did test it in the zman case but it's only for 5 minutes I got to test it a little bit more uh it was doing a fine job at 4.4 gig so it does cool okay uh not as good as the NX t40 I know that because the NX t40 is a beast anyway this thing yeah they're the they're the two good points that I can think of let's get on to the bad points um straight away the first thing is you're installing this uh CPU Cooler the fins are really sharp so if you're a diabetic with thin skin on your hands or your hands cut easily you may be cutting your hands on this thing it was you know my hands are okay but I just thought damn you know even cool as 10 years back in the day like an old noxo cooler that I put on my uh way back forgot what CPU Cooler I put it on but back in 2006 maybe 2005 even that was fine I mean that didn't have sharp edges this thing really was just like a cut like in the factory you y you let's let's release some uh Ninja knives to people and call it a CPU fan because essentially yeah you cut your hands on this pretty easy easily I think they're pretty sharp definitely a lot sharper than the Animax t40 and I'm going to be comparing this throughout uh the review to the Animax t40 because they're similarly priced I mean this is about this was about $30 the anamax was $30 however it went up to $34 and I thought hell I'll try a new CPU Cooler and I get to give you guys a review as well but in hindsight I wish I had never got this cooler man like let's get on to the worst part was installing this thing holy crap when I got the the instruction manuals out they just clumped Intel AMD everything together just clumped it all in one section and you had to read the whole thing and freefor all it and then the pictures were illustrating the installation so bad there was just there was no Circle or no sort of uh ex there was no sort of uh enlarged graph on what point they were talking about they just put the diagram in two parts and just said okay and you just had to look really closely and you're like oh there's the subtle difference right there like definitely if you if you um if your eyesight wasn't 2020 you freaking probably wouldn't even see the difference in the instruction manual that's how poorly written the instruction manual was for this thing now let's get on to the other part of the installation installing this thing was just like a ghetto job because I had mounted it to my test bench and I didn't realize but once I took it out of my test bench which took forever and got it installed in the Zan z3+ I realized that holy crap this CPU Cooler I mean they gave you this double sided tape and it came off and you couldn't install it again it was just useless I had to get some U nail polish remover and get it off because half of it came off and half of it was stuck on the freaking base still so I ended up I'm now using in the Z Zan Z3 plus case which is a fantastic Case by the way but I'm using that with um just no double-sided tape I just decided to leave it out I mean why they even included it if it was so bad is just beyond me they could have saved themselves some money because you don't even need the double-sided tape but uh Stupid there as well now the worst thing this is the worst thing right when you're installing it it's like you're sitting there and you're like okay is this right is this how I install it and then you finally get it installed once you're clamping down the screws and they pretty much clamp in but there's no uh washer there's no bolt in between it's just like this free ghetto spring mechanism that they're using it's it's absolutely horrid I've never seen anything worse for clamping down a CPU Cooler in my life I mean even the stock Intel and the stock AMD coolers clamped down miles better than this thing and that leads me on to the other bad point about this cooler is um it's so hard to screw the freaking cooler in like on if you need to take it out if you've just got your whole rig installed and you've got to maybe remove the CPU Cooler cuz you want to replace the CPU paste or you want to tighten it down again you literally are in fat luck because you can't get this CPU Cooler clamped down again and which you it and honestly will inevitably come loose because of the ghetto spring mechanism pulling against the bolt because there's no washer there's no sort of um tension bolt in between it's just there's this spring uh well there's this metal piece of metal that's pushing against the bolt which over time it will come loose and so if you want to pull it and tighten it again you're going to have to take your whole rig out whole motherboard out and then get to it with their little like ghetto screw thing and like literally this thing is just horrid do not buy it um I'm surprised that in 2014 or two I don't know when this was released maybe last year 2013 I'm surprised they could release a cooler this bad I mean did they test this thing themselves before they sold it because I mean yeah the the spring tension is going to be pulling and I couldn't even get into the top left corner when I tried to tighten them down again on the zman Z3 case I could tighten three of them but I couldn't tighten the top left corner was like impossible so even if my baby uh even if I could have the hands of the size of my baby I couldn't install this cooler so absolutely horrid point there uh what else was just there and this is now let's get on to another bad point about this case so sorry I'm I got to tell you guys why you shouldn't be buying this freaking cooler um the noise it's just horrible they say here on the back let's have a look here low noise they say here low noise 140 mm pwm fan with no low noise let me play the noise for you right now is that low noise to you man I noticed it straight away coming from my anamax t40 to this thing it was horror the noise was bad it was the worst fan in my whole system and it shouldn't be especially when the CPU Cooler is really cool they should have a switching mechanism that goes from low to high but they right here on their box conveniently no switching noise no switching noise what switch is on a CPU Cooler make no noise when my anamax changes speeds the fan just simply ramps up so really God damn I mean anamax really have to pay attention to detail because this thing is horrid oh and there's another bad point let me talk about another horrid point of this cooler it wobbles even if you tighten it to the extreme which I did uh this thing just wobbles it wobbles uh it wobbled on my test bench it wobbled it's wobbling in the zman Z 3 so they should have renamed this cooler the zman cnps 14-speed wobble because it'll wobble 14 times harder than any CPU Cooler you used to so honestly yeah I mean it come like a little good point about it they do include some thermal grease and stuff like that but yeah I mean honestly I cannot recommend this cooler it was just a horrible experience okay so in conclusion I cannot recommend this CPU in any circumstance is it was just a it was the worst experience I've ever had with the CPU Cooler and this is going back from memory even back when I was installing CPU coolers in like 2005 and I mean that that's what that that was when the market was still relatively young that was when the CPU Cooler Market was kind of just starting to get some traction and getting popularity this thing is like 2013 I don't even know when was this thing released 2012 but I mean a modern CPU Cooler like this sucking this bad is just not on like I mean it really did not hit any points for me I mean it did look good but hey for me looks do not really matter on a rig I mean I'm not sitting here looking at my rig 24/7 I'm playing video games or doing content for you guys or working on my computer so looks really don't bother me uh you know I'd rather have the ugliest CPU Cooler in the world that's a breeze to install and performs really well then have this thing which is a good looking CPU Cooler with high noise and and a horrid installation and I even dread the day when I'm going to have to ret retighten the bolts on my uh AMD rig so God I just yeah I cannot recommend this CPU Cooler under any circumstances I hope you guys enjoyed this review uh I I mean I didn't enjoy I didn't this product was just frustrating I didn't enjoy doing it so I really want to just get get on with this get on to the next review so I'll be reviewing an SSD soon and also I will be you guys can say hello to the ghettoes they're sitting there but anyway I hope you guys enjoyed this video and I'm going to go now and uh peace out and if you did like this video please give it a thumbs up and if you have any questions about this cpq cooler which I don't think you should have I just yeah seriously don't don't buy it let's just this is just one of those things that you you know you don't talk about you just you know one of those embarrassing things that you don't talk about and you don't tell your kids about this is that CPU Cooler anyway guys peace out for now byewelcome back to techs City and this is the dock coming back to you guys today with one of those reviews about the CN ps14 speed a zman 140 mm fan CPU Cooler now this thing is a strong strongly not recommended I do not recommend this unless you got it given to you for free even then the hassle and the pain of installing this thing might want might make you want to throw it in the bin so anyway this thing I'm going to quickly be reviewing doing this because I just don't want to spend too much time on it uh literally I couldn't even be bothered throwing up charts because I'm not going to recommend this cooler I'll just talk about the temps that I got on this when I was testing it when I was doing the AMD testing on this test bench here but ultimately let's talk about the positives because there's so many negatives to go through and there's so little positives I'll quickly mention the positives uh the first positive is that this CPU Cooler once it's installed after you finally get it installed it actually does look pretty good I mean it looks pretty big it looks good in your rig um I do like the styling of it uh the next good point is that it does cool reasonably well I mean it's better than the stock cooler for cooling performance once I got it installed it was uh I did an Ida 64 30 minute Benchmark and it was I think the ambient temperatures were 9° so it was really cold but I only managed to get it up to 29° so it was a 20° Delta at 4.4 gigs on the AMD CPU so it is about 20° and I did test it in the zman case but it's only for 5 minutes I got to test it a little bit more uh it was doing a fine job at 4.4 gig so it does cool okay uh not as good as the NX t40 I know that because the NX t40 is a beast anyway this thing yeah they're the they're the two good points that I can think of let's get on to the bad points um straight away the first thing is you're installing this uh CPU Cooler the fins are really sharp so if you're a diabetic with thin skin on your hands or your hands cut easily you may be cutting your hands on this thing it was you know my hands are okay but I just thought damn you know even cool as 10 years back in the day like an old noxo cooler that I put on my uh way back forgot what CPU Cooler I put it on but back in 2006 maybe 2005 even that was fine I mean that didn't have sharp edges this thing really was just like a cut like in the factory you y you let's let's release some uh Ninja knives to people and call it a CPU fan because essentially yeah you cut your hands on this pretty easy easily I think they're pretty sharp definitely a lot sharper than the Animax t40 and I'm going to be comparing this throughout uh the review to the Animax t40 because they're similarly priced I mean this is about this was about $30 the anamax was $30 however it went up to $34 and I thought hell I'll try a new CPU Cooler and I get to give you guys a review as well but in hindsight I wish I had never got this cooler man like let's get on to the worst part was installing this thing holy crap when I got the the instruction manuals out they just clumped Intel AMD everything together just clumped it all in one section and you had to read the whole thing and freefor all it and then the pictures were illustrating the installation so bad there was just there was no Circle or no sort of uh ex there was no sort of uh enlarged graph on what point they were talking about they just put the diagram in two parts and just said okay and you just had to look really closely and you're like oh there's the subtle difference right there like definitely if you if you um if your eyesight wasn't 2020 you freaking probably wouldn't even see the difference in the instruction manual that's how poorly written the instruction manual was for this thing now let's get on to the other part of the installation installing this thing was just like a ghetto job because I had mounted it to my test bench and I didn't realize but once I took it out of my test bench which took forever and got it installed in the Zan z3+ I realized that holy crap this CPU Cooler I mean they gave you this double sided tape and it came off and you couldn't install it again it was just useless I had to get some U nail polish remover and get it off because half of it came off and half of it was stuck on the freaking base still so I ended up I'm now using in the Z Zan Z3 plus case which is a fantastic Case by the way but I'm using that with um just no double-sided tape I just decided to leave it out I mean why they even included it if it was so bad is just beyond me they could have saved themselves some money because you don't even need the double-sided tape but uh Stupid there as well now the worst thing this is the worst thing right when you're installing it it's like you're sitting there and you're like okay is this right is this how I install it and then you finally get it installed once you're clamping down the screws and they pretty much clamp in but there's no uh washer there's no bolt in between it's just like this free ghetto spring mechanism that they're using it's it's absolutely horrid I've never seen anything worse for clamping down a CPU Cooler in my life I mean even the stock Intel and the stock AMD coolers clamped down miles better than this thing and that leads me on to the other bad point about this cooler is um it's so hard to screw the freaking cooler in like on if you need to take it out if you've just got your whole rig installed and you've got to maybe remove the CPU Cooler cuz you want to replace the CPU paste or you want to tighten it down again you literally are in fat luck because you can't get this CPU Cooler clamped down again and which you it and honestly will inevitably come loose because of the ghetto spring mechanism pulling against the bolt because there's no washer there's no sort of um tension bolt in between it's just there's this spring uh well there's this metal piece of metal that's pushing against the bolt which over time it will come loose and so if you want to pull it and tighten it again you're going to have to take your whole rig out whole motherboard out and then get to it with their little like ghetto screw thing and like literally this thing is just horrid do not buy it um I'm surprised that in 2014 or two I don't know when this was released maybe last year 2013 I'm surprised they could release a cooler this bad I mean did they test this thing themselves before they sold it because I mean yeah the the spring tension is going to be pulling and I couldn't even get into the top left corner when I tried to tighten them down again on the zman Z3 case I could tighten three of them but I couldn't tighten the top left corner was like impossible so even if my baby uh even if I could have the hands of the size of my baby I couldn't install this cooler so absolutely horrid point there uh what else was just there and this is now let's get on to another bad point about this case so sorry I'm I got to tell you guys why you shouldn't be buying this freaking cooler um the noise it's just horrible they say here on the back let's have a look here low noise they say here low noise 140 mm pwm fan with no low noise let me play the noise for you right now is that low noise to you man I noticed it straight away coming from my anamax t40 to this thing it was horror the noise was bad it was the worst fan in my whole system and it shouldn't be especially when the CPU Cooler is really cool they should have a switching mechanism that goes from low to high but they right here on their box conveniently no switching noise no switching noise what switch is on a CPU Cooler make no noise when my anamax changes speeds the fan just simply ramps up so really God damn I mean anamax really have to pay attention to detail because this thing is horrid oh and there's another bad point let me talk about another horrid point of this cooler it wobbles even if you tighten it to the extreme which I did uh this thing just wobbles it wobbles uh it wobbled on my test bench it wobbled it's wobbling in the zman Z 3 so they should have renamed this cooler the zman cnps 14-speed wobble because it'll wobble 14 times harder than any CPU Cooler you used to so honestly yeah I mean it come like a little good point about it they do include some thermal grease and stuff like that but yeah I mean honestly I cannot recommend this cooler it was just a horrible experience okay so in conclusion I cannot recommend this CPU in any circumstance is it was just a it was the worst experience I've ever had with the CPU Cooler and this is going back from memory even back when I was installing CPU coolers in like 2005 and I mean that that's what that that was when the market was still relatively young that was when the CPU Cooler Market was kind of just starting to get some traction and getting popularity this thing is like 2013 I don't even know when was this thing released 2012 but I mean a modern CPU Cooler like this sucking this bad is just not on like I mean it really did not hit any points for me I mean it did look good but hey for me looks do not really matter on a rig I mean I'm not sitting here looking at my rig 24/7 I'm playing video games or doing content for you guys or working on my computer so looks really don't bother me uh you know I'd rather have the ugliest CPU Cooler in the world that's a breeze to install and performs really well then have this thing which is a good looking CPU Cooler with high noise and and a horrid installation and I even dread the day when I'm going to have to ret retighten the bolts on my uh AMD rig so God I just yeah I cannot recommend this CPU Cooler under any circumstances I hope you guys enjoyed this review uh I I mean I didn't enjoy I didn't this product was just frustrating I didn't enjoy doing it so I really want to just get get on with this get on to the next review so I'll be reviewing an SSD soon and also I will be you guys can say hello to the ghettoes they're sitting there but anyway I hope you guys enjoyed this video and I'm going to go now and uh peace out and if you did like this video please give it a thumbs up and if you have any questions about this cpq cooler which I don't think you should have I just yeah seriously don't don't buy it let's just this is just one of those things that you you know you don't talk about you just you know one of those embarrassing things that you don't talk about and you don't tell your kids about this is that CPU Cooler anyway guys peace out for now bye\n"