ZALMAN CNPS8900 Quiet 110mm PWM Fan Long Life Bearing Ultra Quiet Slim CPU Cooler

Pros: -Very quiet operation. Not totally silent but unless you're going fanless it doesn't get much better than this from my experience.

-Seems to cool effectively. I'm using this with a 65W AMD A10-7800 so this cooler is clearly overkill and I haven't had any need to monitor temps at all. I wanted something silent and since the HTPC would be slightly confined on a media shelf I also wanted something that would keep me from worrying about heat building up. After a marathon of activity there seems to be barely any heat coming form the case at all.

-Beautiful design. I've used Zalman coolers almost exclusively for my CPU needs for years. My first was a CNPS7000 way back almost 10 years ago and this cooler seems almost like a throw back to that design. I've always felt that it was one of their better looking ones.

-Low enough profile for very small cases. I'm using the tiny Silverstone MILO ML06B Mini-ITX case and this is just short enough to fit. It's NOT low enough to fit a slim slot load optical drive above it, in fact I had to remove the bracket which would normally allow for that option. I wasn't planning to install one however so it's not a big deal to me. The cooler sits almost perfectly below a fan grill on the top of the case allowing for great airflow.

Cons: -The U-shaped brackets which come with the cooler require it to be installed so that the heat pipes stick out in fixed directions. This can cause compatibility issues with certain motherboards/RAM. If additional brackets were packaged to allow the heatsink to be rotated 90 degrees it would open up a LOT of motherboards for better compatibility.

Overall Review: I selected this cooler based on a motherboard which I eventually discovered wasn't a good choice for my case. When I changed my motherboard selection I forgot to make sure this cooler would be compatible with that one as well. I now know that a GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XN-WIFI is NOT compatible with this. The U-shaped brackets which are needed to fit the cooler with the AM2+ socket require the cooler to be positioned so that the heat pipes bump into the RAM and a motherboard heatsink. I wanted to use this cooler though, so I machined some new brackets which would allow me to rotate it 90 degrees. Basically, they're nearly straight instead of U shaped, but still connect to same points on the cooler as the stock brackets. They work fine but it would have saved a few hours if Zalman made the brackets themselves.

I wouldn't recommend these kinds of modifications unless you have the proper machinery and know how. I only bring it up to show that Zalman could make this cooler compatible for more configurations if they create some of these brackets themselves.

Overall I'm very pleased with this cooler in my HTPC. The build includes the following:

SILVERSTONE MILO Series ML06B Mini-ITX - Fits with about half an inch between the top of the cooler and the grill on the top of this case.

GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XN-WIFI - this is NOT compatible with the cooler. I had to create new parts to make it work.

AMD Radeon Gamer Series 16GB DDR3 2133 - this RAM is proof that giant heatsinks in high end memory are generally a gimmick. It performs wonderfully and sits cleanly under the edge of this Zalman cooler as long as one of the heat pipe sides isn't bumping into it.

SILVERSTONE ST45SF-G 450W SFX12V - this is a little bit quieter than the Zalman cooler, both are very quiet.

SAMSUNG 840 Pro SSD 256GB - no noise, basically no heat, and boots to XBMC in about 15 seconds. no complaints whatsoever.

Pros: None

Cons: BEWARE! Doesn't fit Am4 socket.

Also very large footprint and low clearance cooler. Will not clear RAM on an itx motherboard

Overall Review: Weird that a product being sold right now wouldn't support that standard. At the end of the day it's my fault for not making sure, but it is just weird to not have that supported.