Zerotherm FZ120 CPU Cooler Review

Zerotherm FZ120 CPU Cooler Review

 

It seems a new CPU cooler comes out
every other day vying for the top spot, but as with any product, not
all coolers are created equal… CPU Coolers come in all shapes and
sizes, and some try to be silent as well while performing their main
function, cooling your CPU, while others sacrifice silence for
performance, it all depends on your wants and needs as to the
specific type of cooler you’ll need for your system.

Today for review I’ve got the FZ120 CPU
Cooler from Zerotherm and it’s a beast, in terms of both size and
performance. The FZ120 takes the top spot in most of our cooling
tests while remaining virtually silent at the same time. Since the
FZ120 is so large it does pose a challenge when installing, and it
just downright won’t fit in smaller cases like SFF or even most HTPC
cases, but if you’re looking for great quality, silence and excellent
performance the FZ120 deserves a closer look…

Continue on to check out one of the
best coolers on the market today, the FZ120…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zerotherm
FZ120 CPU Cooler Review

Author: Kristofer Brozio

Sponsor: Zerotherm

 

 

 

 

Tech
Specs,Features or the Basic Info:

 

Zerotherm
FZ120 CPU Cooler

 

Key
Features:

-Best Performance among 120mm
air cooling CPU coolers

-Effective 8-line Heat pipe
effect

-Honeycomb structure for
optimized air flow.

-120mm fan for max. air-flow
(up to .7 CFM)

-PWM(Automatic Fan Control)

-Silence Innovations

-Min. 19 .5 dBA at 1,100 rpm

-Max. 31.4 dBA at 1,800 rpm

-Support Latest Intel CPUs

-Support Latest AMD CPUs

 

 

ZEROtherm
FZ120 Specifications:

 

Dimensions: 126 X 61 X 156 mm
(4.96 X 2.40 X 6.14 inch)

Weight: 670g (Without Clip
Components)

 

Materials:

FIN: Aluminum

Base: Copper

Heat Pipe: Copper

Heat Dissipation Area: 6,827
cm² (1,058 inch²)

Cooling Capacity: Over 150W

Fan Size: 120 X 25 mm (4.72 X
0.98 inch)

Fans Speed: 1,100 ~ 1,800 rpm
(± 10%)

Acoustic Noise: Min. 19.5 ~
Max. 31.4 dBA (± 10%)

Connector: 4 Pin, PWM

Operating Voltage: 5.0 ~ 13.8
VDC

Airflow Rate:59.48 CFM

 

Compatibility
List:

CoreTM2 Extreme

Socket-T(LGA775)

CoreTM2 Quad

CoreTM2 Duo

Pentium D

Pentium 4

Phenom X3 / X4

939 / 940 / AM2

Athlon64 FX X2 / BE

Athlon64

Sempron

Opteron

 

Incompatibility
List:

Intel: Socket 478, 771, 603,
604

AMD: Socket 754, Socket F or
Socket A

 

 

 

A
Better Look at Things:

 

The box for the Zerotherm FZ120 is
full of information all over it about the cooler inside, through the
window on the front of the box you can get a glimpse of the cooler
inside.

 

 

Inside the box we find the FZ120
Cooler itself, a 120mm fan and a bag with the accessories inside.

 

 

The accessories include mounting
brackets, anti-vibration strips, fan mounts, CPU mounts and a tube of
Zerotherm ZT-100 thermal compound.

 

 

The FZ120 consists of four
U-shaped heatpipes and numerous very shiny aluminum fins. The actual
shape of the fins is interesting and you can see the shaper when
looking down from the top, if you have a window in your case you’ll
be able to see this distinctive looking cooler.

 

 

The base come with part of the
mounting system pre-attached, you attach the socket specific mounting
brackets to this base.

 

 

The actual base of the FZ120 is a
copper plate that appears to be flat and is finished very well to an
almost mirror like quality, there are fine lines visible in the base
but nothing major.

 

 

 

 

Installation,
Testing and Comparison:

 

For installation the first thing
you’ll need to do is attach the CPU mounting bracket, I’m using an
LGA775 platform so that’s what I need to install. It’s very easy to
do, just a couple screws and you’re done.

 

Next step is to install the
anti-vibration strips and then the fan mounts, the strips just stick
to the fins of the cooler and the fan mounts go into holes on the top
and bottom of cooler, fairly easy to do, but I found the fan mounts
do pop out very easily when trying to attach the fan. You’ll need to
mount the cooler to your motherboard before you attach the fan though
as the fan gets in the way of the mounting screws, for review picture
purposes I’ve attached to fan to cooler so you can see what it looks
like completely assembled.

 

 

The mounting screws are spring
loaded and attached to the mounting bracket which makes installation
a bit easier as you don’t have to worry about loosing screws or
trying to hold them while holding the cooler and backplate.

 

Once installed I didn’t run into
an clearance issues, but the FZ120 is large, both wide and tall, so
there will be issues with smaller cases, and it won’t fit into an SFF
or HTPC case most likely. The FZ120 almost touches my power supply,
there is about a centimeter or two of clearance, this tight fit does
make it hard to install the fan onto the cooler, especially attaching
the bottom fan clip. I found I had to pull the PSU out to get the
clip attached to the fan correctly.

 

 

Onto the testing…

 

The first chart is using the
included thermal compound, Zerotherms own ZT-100 paste. There’s no
comparison in there just temps running on my C2D6420 CPU..

 

 

The following three charts are
using the C2D6420 processor, Gigabyte G33M microATX Motherboard and
Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound. I’ve compared the Zerotherm
FZ120 to the top ten coolers in our C2D cooling charts.

 

Ambient temperature during all
testing was approximately 19C. To get load on the CPU I used Orthos
Stress Prime, and Coretemp to get the CPU core temperatures, temps
were logged and then averaged out to get what you see in the charts.
All testing is the same for all CPU Coolers to insure accurate
comparisons.

 

First up is testing with the fan
attached to the CPU header and/or PWN controlled. The FZ120 fan is
silent running in this mode.

 

 

as you can see the FZ120 offers
very good performance coming in third place in our charts overall,
with the same load temps actually as the Noctua NH-C12P.

 

The next chart is with the fan
connected to a Molex connection or with it running at full speed. The
fan of the FZ120 is virtually silent in this mode as well, it adds
almost no additional noise to the system, I could not hear it over
the other fans in the system.

 

 

With the fan running at full speed
we see excellent temperatures, making the FZ120 come in first in our
cooling charts.

 

Next up is testing with no fan.

 

 

Here we see the Zerotherm FZ120
even performs very well with no fan at all almost matching the
temperature of the massive Scythe Ninja Copper CPU Cooler. Very good
performance indeed.

 

 

Now we have testing with my
C2Q6600 CPU. Ambient temperature was the same 19C, to get load I used
two instances of Orthos Stress Prime running with affinity set to the
separate cores to insure full load. Again here Coretemp was used to
record the temps, logged and averaged out to get the results shown in
the charts. The results are the average of all four cores
temperatures.

 

First up is testing with the fan
connected to the CPU header again:

 

 

Here we see an average one degree
drop over the leading cooler, not much but enough to unseat the
leading cooler in our charts.

 

 

Now we have testing with the fan
connected to the Molex:

 

 

 

 



 

Here we see where the FZ120 cooler
really performs well, with about four degrees difference between the
leading cooler. The Zerotherm FZ120 really surprised me with its
performance…

 

and finally we have testing with
no fan on the C2Q6600:

 

 

 



 

 

Here again we see the FZ120 edging
out he competition to take the number one spot in our cooling charts,
even with no fan the FZ120 performs very well and could be the basis
of a virtually silent system, of course there are two system fans
running and the fan included with the PSU as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summary and Comments

 

The Zerotherm FZ120 CPU cooler
very much surprised me in it’s overall performance, overtaking the
leaders in our CPU cooling charts on most tests.

 

The FZ120 is truly an excellent
cooler offering silence and performance, it’s also aesthetically
pleasing and is very well made and designed.

 

This cooler could have gotten a
perfect score were it not for the installation issues I encountered,
these problems are ones that I believe will most likely affect
everyone as well. The size is also a consideration, it is very large
and heavy and will not fit in all cases, due to its size; extra steps
need to be taken during the installation to get it installed
correctly.

 

 

DragonSteelMods gives the
Zerotherm FZ120 CPU Cooler a 4.5 out of 5 score and our Recommended
Award as well.

fgv

 

Pros:

-Excellent performance all around

-Quiet

-Looks cool

-Well made

 

 

Cons:

-Large, won’t fit in all cases

-Can be hard to install, must
remove motherboard from case

-In some situations you might have
to remove the PSU to complete installation

 

 

 

I would like to thank Zerotherm for the chance to review the FZ120 CPU Cooler and for their support
of DSM.

 

 

 

review# 469