ZALMAN Reserator 3 MAX Dual Water Cooler

Pros: Fantastic Liquid Cooling Cool and innovative Design Attractive appearance Sturdy construction Closed loop system that is maintenance free

Cons: Price is a little higher compared to other options.

Overall Review: Let me start by saying I am a loyal New Egg Customer. My 1st unit was damaged in shipping and New Egg promptly took care of me. So Reason #1 to shop here. Once the 2nd unit arrived in perfect shape I began the install. Install is pretty straight forward you will just need to make sure you have space. Anyone who can build a PC should not have trouble with this. NOTE: The radiators and fans are THICK u will need space. Did I mention u need space???? In my AMD Scorpicus Mid tower I had to massage my case with a dremel by opening some new "Air Vents" in the top so I could shift the unit such that it does not touch the Ram. Also had to "trim" the fins on my Ram. (Gotta Love a Dremel) With the unit mounted and in place and everything reconnected and doublechecked, I fired the beast up. I am working with the following. Asrock Fatal1ty MB, AMD FX 8350 CPU 32gb Gskill Ripjaw Ram dual 240gb SSD Hard Drives 500gb Seagate barricuda Soundblaster ZX Sound Card AMD Radeon R9 295 X2 8gb Video Card So system boots fine and using the utility that comes with the Fatal1ty MB, I see my temps have dropped way down. So now to Test... Prior to this cooler using a Cooler Master Seidon 120 I would get 60 degrees Celsius using Star Citizen. Stock clock with the Zalman.... 42/44 degrees Celcius. So now I overclock. After numerous settings, voltage chages, and reboots (Won't bore ya with the details) I now have my FX 8350 running stabily at 4.4ghz and on normal games my temps are 43/45 degrees celcius and Star citizen maxed out runs 54/55 degrees celcius. So the effects are clear. This cooler can get the job done. I wish it would have been offered at a 99.99 price point vs the 134.99 price I paid, but you do get what you pay for as they say. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!!

Pros: Nice and gigantic... Well engineered and designed as most Zalman products are. My ancient liquid cooling system started leaking, so I had to switch to the CHEAPO stock fan. Jeez, AMD fans are terrible. My FX-8350 was getting absolutely annoying with fan noise under half load and even after re-seating the fan with a better thermodynamic compound, it still sounded like a Dyson Airblade when just watching TV. After some good success installing one of their smaller offerings in a friend's rig, I decided to give this a go to shut this thing up for good. The proc would hit 65C at half to 3/4 load before as if the fan wasn't even built for the proc and I was running stock speeds. With this, I've never seen it crack 40C even while gaming. That's good in my book and the installation (for proper cases) is a breeze.

Cons: From a design standpoint, I would have liked to see the ability to easily reverse the mounting. I knew ahead of time my case wasn't tall enough with clearance between the top of the motherboard and the case, but I have an Antec LANBoy (dumb name) whatever case that is just a skeleton and mesh that I just sawed into the top and the fans have enough flow, but they are pushing down. Obviously not the optimal top exhaust everyone should have, but two 120mm rear and side fans pull well and oddly enough, my GTX980 runs cooler now that it doesn't have to share airspace with a hairdryer above it. The instructions aren't "hard" for enthusiasts to follow, but they are a bit "Ikea" and tiny. I also had one bad LED on a fan upon arrival, but of course this is after you install this thing and Newegg offered to RMA, but I wanted to hit Zalman to just replace the fan. At the time Zalman's entire website was down which was weird, but hopefully they will just "be cool" and send me a fan.

Overall Review: I was happy with the results of this and purchased a second one for my i7-980X that I am transitioning to a home automation and media server.

Pros: Excellent cooling. I run in a sometimes hot environment up to 38 degrees C (101 degrees F). This CPU cooler keeps my system running. Blue LEDs on the cooler are cool.

Cons: The cooling fans are meant to be installed at the inside top of the case, and the case should have an open grill on top of the case so the fans can blow air out through the top of the case. But this was not obvious to me before purchasing the product. The cooling fans did not fit in my case. The cooling fan unit is large, with both fans connected together. This large size is required to be able to cool as well as it does. My memory has tall heat spreader fins, which were too tall to be able to fir both the memory with fins and this CPU cooler's large fans inside the case. I removed the grill on top of my case, moved the cooler's fans to the OUTSIDE top of the case, created a bracket for both mounting the fans securely and blocking the air flow out the top of the case except for the air flow through the fans. The bracket was a large flat piece to cover the top of the case (with the top grill removed) with a figure-8 cut-out in the center. The fans are so securely mounted, that I can pick up my whole case by lifting the fans. I did not need to get a new super-size case, I have cool looking fans on top of my case, the cool LEDs in the fans are clearly visible, and most importantly my CPU and my whole case stay cool.

Overall Review: Great cooling system for hot CPUs. I would recommend it. Just be aware of what you are getting in the size and mounting requirements of the fans.

Pros: I was worried about buying this unit. Especially after there only being two real reviews on the product. I looked high and low for a water unit, and this unit continuously caught my eye. It had a cool blue transparent look i couldn't get over. So I on and off debated on purchasing it over a course of a few weeks. So I researched it. There weren't many reviews besides Newegg's, which one was clearly opposed to this device while the other didn't give much feedback besides a plus score. Well I installed it and I am currently using it (overclocked) now. Not a single issue with its performance. When idle and not overclocked it sits around 35 and doesn't change much despite the workload. The same for OC'd, it sits around 45-50. The unit works great. Kudos to ZALMAN. It does its job...( VERY WELL!)

Cons: A little loud at full speed... but generally wouldn't be there at that speed anyway (just as long as it keeps it cool!). Installing it was relatively simple but in my case I wouldn't be able to fit my full-sized RAM. So on my Corsair Vengeance RAM I had to actually remove the heat displacing covers to make them lower profile( Maybe others will have a larger case?)

Pros: It works

Cons: At first made lots of noise and had slurping/bubbling sounds, I played around in the mobo bios and finally dialed in the fans, the slurping/bubbling sounds are gone and the only time the fans themselves get loud is when my CPU hits a certain level

Overall Review: The blue leds were pretty dim, I ended up clipping them since my system is green anyways. I have recommended this to friends.

Pros: unbelievable cooling keeps my asrock x99 intel i7-5820K when oc at 4.2GHZ temp between 33 to37c.First on i got came damaged but newegg as usual helped me quickly.I would recommend this to anyone

Cons: had to do some fab work to get it to fit my NZXT Phantom PHAN-001RD ATX Full Tower case.took a little while but looks great.no other probs to report.

Overall Review: i'm buying the single to fit my Kraken G10 gpu mounting kit

Pros: Keeps an aging 8350 quite cool @ 4.4 gHz 18c Idle up to 48-49c on full load in AOD stability test, for days if it pleases. Assembly parts included are of excellent quality. Backplate mounting was quite frankly, genius. Got this in by myself. (use that box it came in to sit it on and keep it cpu level while you work at the side panel of the case)

Cons: Included 120mm PWM fans are complete and total garbage, it's the reason for the docked egg unfortunately. It's so disappointing, in such a high cost AIO cooling solution, especially from Zalman. The cooling of the fans isn't poor, but they also aren't anywhere near what they should be; especially for the noise generated from the materials they are made from. They are made from some kind of very rigid hard plastic, I couldn't find any fan setting, from profile to full bore; that didn't make that slight plastic mechanical tick. The fans were easily replaced and the rest is history. Also! While the fans "can" be replaced, be careful. The plastic I mentioned is also what shrouds the radiator itself. If you go to replace them just take it slow and brace the plastic around the rad with your free hand. It does NOT like torque when replacing the fans. Be warned.

Overall Review: Have an i7 4790k on its way. I'm hoping with the lower TDP, it'll serve me even better when that arrives. Also, it has to be noted, my case is a Thermaltake Core V71. There is a rail offset from the motherboard running on top of the inside of the case. Make sure you have the room and especially the width. As it is, with my LP memory it still barely has an inch between the fans and the top of the memory heatsink and this case is huge, so be aware. VERY IMPORTANT: Read the Instructions carefully and make sure you are using the correct screws for the right step/socket. Very easy to mix some of these up to the untrained eye.

Pros: Works great! Keeps my 140w Haswell-E well within safe limits even at minimum pump and fan RPMS. While there are better coolers out there, it is absolutely overkill for any sane user, and even overkill for most sane overclockers.

Cons: The pump cavitates constantly at all RPMS. With no reservoir to catch air bubbles in the cooling loop, the thing is constantly sucking up air bubbles and pushing them through the waterblock, leading to a noise not dissimilar to a drunken man relieving himself in a back alley. When I first tested the unit before installation, it cavitated so loudly I swore it was broken. It was not broken, but the cavitation noise was louder than the pump noise itself. I mounted the radiator in the top of my case, all according to Zalman's preferred methods After about a week of the pump running at 50% (1000 RPM) I was pleased to discover the cavitation actually stopped, and the unit was blissfully quiet. After about a month, the cavitation returned, quieter than before, but still louder than the pump itself. While the unit continues to perform just fine, the fact that it's constantly sucking air gives me concerns about how many years it's going to last before performance IS impacted. On the subject of noise, The cooling fans included are high speed and performance, but of dubious build quality. One of the two fans on my unit already has a failing bearing. Replacing the fans is tricky, they mount to flimsy plastic, and their mounting screws go through the fan and into the heatsink, rather than through the heatsink and into the fan. The unused mounting holes on the other side of your replacement fan will get in the way of you putting the screws back in. You'll have to dremel them off, or use a screw driver that can fit through the mounting holes of the fan. I have always been a fan of zalman products for how incredibly quiet they are. The Reserator 3 falls flat on it's face though in this respect. While the pump and the fans are both quiet enough at low RPMS, Zalmans inability to more completely purge the loop of air makes the entire unit unpleasantly loud. Liquid cooling loops with a reservoir to catch any air bubbles trapped in the loop simply don't make the kinds of noises the reserator 3 makes.

Overall Review: You really cannot go wrong with how well this unit keeps your CPU cool. It is a very capable cooler and is pleasing to the eye as well. Unfortunately the Reserator 3 really fails to live up to Zalmans reputation for quiet cooling solutions. The cavitation noise is really disappointing, and could possibly be fixed by bleeding the loop more carefully at the factory, or the addition of a small internal reservoir in the radiator to catch stray air bubbles and keep them from being sucked into the pump. In a quiet room, when all your PC's fans are turned to minimum, you will be treated to a constant irregular trickling that is far more annoying than ordinary fan noise, and significantly louder than any fan in your case.