14 DAY TRIAL // There are many things that could have made their way to the Consumer Electronics Show instead of this cooler we're about to check out, but Zalman insisted on having it there in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Then again, we can actually understand that, because the cooler, which is called FX70, is completely fanless but can still handle Intel and AMD chips.
In fact, it is compatible with all Intel LFA 2011, 1366, 1156, 1155, 1150 and 775 central processing units, as well as AMD FM2, FM1, AM3, AM3+, AM2 and AM2+ central processors and accelerated processing units.
It's not totally clear to us what the top thermal design power has to be on the chips though, in order for the cooler to handle it.
The “Twist” heatsink design is new and good looking, to be sure, but it's not bound to cope with high thermal loads alone.
Fortunately, despite that, the Zalman FX70 is a fanless cooler, it supports two 120 mm fans, so you can add them if you upgrade from a low-power CPU to a better one at some point in the future.
You'll be sacrificing the total silence that way though. Still, when the heatsink, copper base and six heatpipes prove unable to deal with the heat alone, getting a fan will be necessary.
Fortunately, there are plenty of 120 mm fans out there that don't make too much noise, and if you have a decent headset, you'll be cut off from outside interference anyway. Mostly.
Zalman will ship the FX70 cooler with a gram of ZM-STG2M thermal grease. Unfortunately, the price and ETA (estimated time of arrival) are still under wraps.
Not that we're all that shocked. After all, the dual-fan, all-in-one liquid cooler Reserator 3 Max Dual also got put on show at CES 2014 without a price and time of release attached.
Zalman FX70 measures 110 x 140 x 158 mm / 4.33 x 5.51 x 6.22 inches and weighs 530 grams / 1.16 pounds.