Design

The new cooler from ASUS resembles Zalman’s CNPS9500/9700 LED, but I think it’s designed better as concerns achieving maximum efficiency.

There are six separate heat pipes instead of the Zalman coolers?“three like six? Each of them goes out of the copper plate in the cooler’s base and makes up a loop, ending on the other side of the cooler. The six heat pipes are divided into two groups, three pipes in each. Each group carries 64 copper ribs for a total of 128 ribs. For comparison, the Zalman CNPS9700 LED has 125 such ribs, but the cooler’s dissipation area seems larger overall (ASUS doesn’t tell us the area of the heatsink of the new cooler). On the other hand, the Silent Knight’s fan is located not at the side of the heatsink, but in the center, in between the pipes and plates. This helps make a better use of the air stream because the plates are cooled not only with the blown-out air but also with the air that is being taken from the outside.

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The fan is topped with a black aluminum plate. Besides a picture of a sword, the direction of airflow is indicated on the plate’s sides. There is also a slit in its top ?I guess it is intended to supply more fresh air.

This plate and the fan are fastened on an aluminum base that is secured with clamps on two heat pipes:

So if the fan fails for some reason, you can try to find a replacement. By the way, the Silent Knight is equipped with a 92mm fan on a sliding bearing with translucent blades and blue highlighting. The fan speed is constant at ~2200rpm, creating 52.25CFM airflow. The amount of noise is not specified. Subjectively, the cooler isn’t loud, but not quiet, either. If you set the 110mm fan of the Zalman CNPS9700 LED at 1950-2000rpm, it will be about as noisy as the Silent Knight.