Introduction
Not a very long time ago, most people thought they would have to compromise by choosing cooling performance or silence. o­ne of the first and best known companies that tore down this myth was Zalman. Zalman has always striven to provide excellent cooling performance but at the lowest noise level and some of their products became famous for being able to achieve excellent performance with very low noise levels. They also became famous also for the massive size of their cooling solutions. Bacata from France was kind enough to send me a popular Zalman CPU cooler, the CNPS7700-AlCu, so we can take a look at today's offerings by Zalman.

Manufacturer specifications
 
Dimensions : 136(L) x 136(W) x 67(H)mm
Weight : 600g
Base Material : Pure Aluminum & Pure Copper
Dissipation Area : 3,268 cm2
Bearing Type : 2-Ball
Speed : 1,000 ~ 2,000rpm ¡À 10%
Thermal Resistance : 0.21 ~ 0.28¡ãC/W
Noise Level : 20 ~ 32dB ¡À 10%
 
Features
Does not generate noise or vibration in Silent Mode.
Pure Copper and Pure Aluminum base material ensures excellent heat dissipation.
Intel Pentium 4 (Socket 775), Intel Pentium 4 (Socket 478), and AMD64 (Socket 754/939/940) compatible design for broad compatibility.
The large 120mm fan inside the FHS maximizes cooling performance by providing sufficient airflow even at slow rotation speeds.
The large 120mm fan provides air flow over a large area, cooling not o­nly the CPU, but the VGA card, Northbridge, FET, and RAM.
The adjustable fan speed controller (FAN MATE 2) enables control of noise and fan performance.