Thoughts

David, HEXUS Commander in Chief, wants the Reserator after I've done testing it. He'll be lucky. The Reserator is aimed at a different kind of computing enthusiast than the overclocker and I've seen one too many reviews berate it for not letting the reviewer run his CPU at silly speeds. They're getting the wrong end of the shiny blue 23.5 inch stick. It's to make your stock or mildly overclocked PC as quiet as a mouse. A dead mouse. Plumb in a GPU waterblock which Zalman will happily sell you and it's only your power supply and hard drives that'll conspire against you to make your PC audible. Zalman will even sell you parts to shut them up too.

It won't take your CPU to the speeds a good air-cooler, like the Hyper-6 used in testing, will. But then it doesn't make a racket. Cooler Master say the Hyper-6 is silent with the fan on low-speed. Quiet? Yes. Silent? You're joking. The Reserator is silent.

It all depends on what you want. Do you want to overclock? Look elsewhere. Do you mind a wee bit of fan noise? Look elsewhere. Do you want is-my-PC-even-switched-on silence? Give Zalman your money now, they thoroughly deserve it.

It's expensive (over £180 at the time of writing), but the penny pinching will be more than worth it, should blissful silence be your goal.

For its intended purpose, it absolutely deserves the following score.

Score

Pros

Sweet, gorgeous silence
Good looks
Easy to fit
Supports every CPU you'd want to fit it to
Awesome tubing
Did I mention it was quiet?

Cons

Not cheap
Your parents might think it's the latest in bong design

Thanks

Zalman for the sample.

Login with Forum Account

Don't have an account? Register today!

Thats quite interesting actually, Zalman have attempted silence before and it looks like they have suceeded this time. That might have an application as part of a HTPC setup, if only Zalman could make it a different colour….

Mmmmm nice review. Not very often something gets a 10! Gotta admit i love the idea of utter silence, and with 2 of them you could have an utterly silent ninja dual CPU rig too!

/ wonders if there is any way he can modify his ceiling so that the reserator pokes up into the cold dark wet outside :D

/ wonders whether 2 reserators will fit into a near silent beer fridge :D

Oh the scope for silent cooling is immense.

Sod david, send that bad boy onto me Ryssseh baybeh! :)

Butuz

Nice that the review looks at the purpose of the Reserator - and now what people thought it should do.

When I saw it at CTS I was in awe of its looks, but it clearly wasn't designed for overclocking.

However, Zalman's new totally silent case - now that IS something to look out for!

:D

As always, nice review Rys.

Don't see 10 very often but it is a very good kit.
The lack of any cooling over the fins does let it down a bit with it keeping CPU temps up, if some of the water passed through them (like the pipes in a radiator) it would reduce temps a bit, would need a powerful pump to move through it though.
As you said, its not meant for overclockers so I seems like an excellent kit for me (im always complaining about the noise :D)
Nice review mate, keep it up :)

Problem is Kez that Zalman case cost some £800 odd doesnt it? Awesome bit of engineering mind.

Butuz