Going from a Antec Kuhler 620 to Zalman CNPS9900MAX

Summer arrived. Kuhler 620 couldn’t cut it with fans running low. Running the fan at 3000RPM all the time, or even when gaming, was not an option. So I had to look for a new cooler, an air cooler to be precise, because they could cool pretty much same as a AIO water cooler, while screaming much less.

Note: I did say I won’t add anything new to this PC, but mother nature had other plans! I cannot help that, right?

One problem though. The best in the class air coolers could not fit. There was the limitation of clearance inside the case, but more importantly, the dreaded Corsair Vengeance RAM made it impossible for any cooler to clear their height. So I had to look for something that did not protrude  into the RAM slots.

There are very little options. I found the Zalman CNPS9900 MAX, not only did exactly THAT and also performed better than the Kuhler 620!!! Victory!

Antec Kuhler 620 performance with different fans

Hey news flash! I am not happy with the cooling performance of my CPU cooler. But you all know, I’m never happy with anything, but that’s me. Some people are hard to satisfy. (That can be bad for both parties though)

Anyways, I tried many fans to get better cooling performance out of this radiator. There is no going back for me. I’m stuck with water cooling. A quality air cooler performs much better than these clumsy closed-loop water coolers for the same price (or even less) but they are very big.