Zalman TNN 500AF Grange-over-Sands

It's said that silence is golden. In PC terms, this is patently untrue. Silence is black, costs close to £1,000, weighs more than a sack of spuds and is called the TNN (Totally No Noise) 500AF. Made by Zalman, this case can house a full-size PC and cool it without making any noise.

Unlike a standard PC case, where air is forced through the central chamber by a battery of fans, the massive TNN 500AF is more like a car amplifier (albeit with the styling of a battleship). It's almost as big as a supertanker and, as with car amps, all the heat-producing components are attached to the case, which functions as a giant heatsink.

The original TNN 500A was launched last year, along with the excellent silent water-cooling kit, the Reserator 1. However, the launch of a new generation of graphics cards and the ever-increasing heat output of processors has required Zalman to relaunch the TNN 500A in a new and improved form. The AF version of the TNN 500 differs from the original model in several ways, the most obvious being the increased capacity of the PSU. It's been upped to a beefy 400W and can deliver a healthy 20A on the 5V rail, while the twin 12V rails (18A and 16A) can feed a power-guzzling Pentium 4e and a high-end graphics card. You also get a full complement of plugs, with six Molex, two floppy, a 6-pin PCI-E, 4-pin ATX12V, and a 20/24-pin ATX/BTX connector and adaptor.

The TNN 500AF has the power to cope with a very fast PC, but Zalman is clearly hoping to outgun even the hottest components in terms of the TNN's heat dissipation powers. It stands 60cm tall and weighs 32kg. Its tremendous girth is there to enable the case-cum-heatsink to dissipate huge amounts of heat, because the PSU, GPU and CPU are all connected to it. The PSU is directly attached to one of the two extruded aluminium side panels, so instead of taking a standard air-cooled PSU's box shape, it lies flat and squat against the hinged side panel. This ensures that it has a huge contact area with the case, increasing the amount of heat it can transfer.

Sitting right above the PSU and directly serviced by dedicated Molex and S-ATA power connections are the drive bays. There are two designed to take optical drives, which are mounted at the top of the front panel and are accessible through a large gap, while directly below is a series of plates that can mount a maximum of six hard disks. These plates connect the drives directly to the case for heat dissipation. If you use the ZM-2HC2 hard disk cooler provided, you'll lose a second drive mount because of its bulky size, although its additional heatpipes will provide even more heat dissipation. What little airflow there is comes from convection and this effect is helped by the case's five 120mm fan apertures - two at the top of the chassis, two at the bottom and one at the back. Hot air rises from the components, and exits through the top vents allowing cool air to flow in from underneath the case. There's enough convection to keep energy-efficient hard disks at a reasonable temperature, once again with help from the side panels.

A small amount of convection won't keep a modern CPU from overheating, however. While the TNN 500AF supports both Socket 478 and LGA775 Pentium 4s, and Socket 754 and 939/940 Athlon 64s, Zalman recommends that if you use a CPU with a TDP (thermal design power) rating of more than 100W, you should add a 120mm fan to the TNN500AF. If you're a member of the AMD camp, this means you can passively run pretty much any Athlon 64, as both the 4000+ and FX-53 have a TDP rating of less than 100W. Only a Prescott-core 3.2GHz Pentium 4e or higher will require a fan. With one 120mm fan fitted, the TNN 500AF can cope with a CPU TDP of up to 150W, which provides some extra headroom for overclocking.

Overclocking would add a lot of extra load to the PSU, though, and it needs to power the graphics card as well. Apparently, the TNN 500AF can cope with anything up to a 6800 Ultra or an X800XT PE.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

The TNN 500AF's heat dissipation capabilities are impressive, but building a system inside isn't for the faint-hearted. Inscribed on the back panel we thought we saw the words 'Abandon hope all who enter here', though on closer inspection, it proved to be instructions for the door lock.

Since the case is designed to use its ample mass to dampen vibrations as well as to dissipate heat, everything about it is over the top. To get inside, you first have to lower the rubber feet, each of which will supposedly support a ton, then lift the case off its castors and immobilise it. With it locked in place, you can unscrew the side panel, unclip the massive lock and pry open the door from the rear of the case. However, unlike the original TNN 500A, opening the AF doesn't require you to enlist the help of both the Incredible Hulk and He-Man to wrench the two halves of the case apart. It opens in a clamshell style, revealing the impressively complicated array of heatpipes that transfer heat from the CPU, GPU and Northbridge to the sides of the case.

Installing the Northbridge and GPU blocks is fairly simple, but after you get the motherboard, CPU and heatpipes in position you might start thinking that ending world hunger is a trivial mission in comparison. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, you need to mount small heat-transfer blocks on the back of your motherboard, behind hot components such as the VRMs and Northbridge. Since these are metal it's easy to short out connections on the motherboard if you don't exercise extreme caution. I totalled one Athlon 64 motherboard learning this the hard way. Once the board is in place, you have to tackle the CPU cooling block and its six heatpipes. This, frankly, is a two-geek job unless you've also enlisted the assistance of Doctor Octopus, or have an awful lot of patience.

PERFORMANCE

To test the performance of the TNN 500AF we opted to install the hottest things we could find in the CPC labs. Our test system comprised a 3.6GHz Pentium 4e, GeForce 6800 Ultra, 10,000rpm 74GB Raptor hard disk, two 7,200rpm Maxtor DiamondMax 10 hard drives, and to top it off, two optical drives to see if the TNN 500AF really could live up to Zalman's claims.

Without a single fan in place, I managed to play more than an hour of Far Cry, although the GPU temperature alarm did go off at one point, signalling that the GeForce 6800 Ultra had reached a toasty 115ûC. And when we left the system looping some 3D benchmarks overnight, it had crashed by morning.

However, the 3.6GHz Pentium 4e has a TDP of nearly 120W, so we added a single 120mm intake fan to bring it in line with Zalman's recommendations. After this, the system was stable for days on end, folding and running 3DMark05.

CONCLUSION

The TNN 500AF is a massive step up from its predecessor in terms of cooling performance and usability. It supports every CPU and GPU available, and with the correct components (a sub-100W processor and a quiet hard disk in the ZM-2HC2 drive mount), it can be virtually silent. If silence is what you crave most, then the TNN 500AF is worth the incredible £900 price.

Author: Josh Blodwell

Zalman TNN 500AF