---

Date: July 15th, 2010
Article by: Jackie Mueller (Hardware Reviewer)
Edited By: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: Zalman
<--CLICK FOR PRICES ON A NOTEBOOK COOLER IN THE UNITED STATES
<--CLICK FOR PRICES ON A NOTEBOOK COOLER IN CANADA

 

 

PRODUCT INSTALLATION AND TESTING

Connecting the cooler to a laptop takes literally just a few seconds. Simply plug in the mini USB connector to the back of the unit, and then plug in the two male USB connectors to any free USB ports on your laptop.

Testing

In terms of ergonomics, I was impressed with the height and angle that my laptop was resting at while using the cooler. The positioning felt very comfortable while I was typing and neither the laptop nor the stand itself shifted around during normal use. The fan was also very quiet while running at the highest speed, and not noticeable at all when on low speed. The fan moves air up from the bottom and it created a slight breeze around my hands that was pretty nice.

To test out the cooling abilities of the ZM-NC3000U, I recorded CPU and HDD temps while using my laptop both with the cooler and without. When not using the cooler, the laptop was placed on a wood desk.

The parameters used during testing are:

• Laptop - Dell Inspiron 1100 (Celeron CPU, 2GB RAM).

• Ambient room temperature remained a constant 22 degrees Celsius during testing.

• ZM-NC3000U fan was set at the highest speed (720 RPM) for testing.

• Idle temps were recorded after the laptop had been sitting at the Windows desktop for an hour.

• Load temps were recorded after an hour of continuous stress testing.

Here are the results without using the ZM-NC3000U:

And here are the results after using the laptop with the ZM-NC3000U:

The cooler managed to drop the CPU idle temp 2 degrees and the load temp one degree. HDD temps also went down a couple degrees while under load. While not a huge change, this particular laptop has a history of running hot so any decrease in temperature is a good thing. Of course, your results may vary depending on the type of laptop used.