The Zalman ZET 5 CPU cooler features a distinctive jet engine-inspired aesthetic, with thermal performance that makes it well-suited for mid-range processor applications.

If you’ve been tinkering with PC hardware for a long time, Zalman should be a brand that rings a bell. Founded in 1999 in South Korea, they were really popular for their CNPS-series of so-called "flower coolers" that were the gold standard for its time (the AMD Athlon 64 and Intel Pentium D era), where these coolers really stood out from the rest of the competition due to their looks and superior performance. The brand then encountered a whole host of high-profile company issues from the mid-2010s, and maintained a somewhat low profile since then.

At Computex 2025 this year, Zalman made waves for their new ZET line-up of CPU coolers that were inspired by the looks of a jet turbine engine, and we have here the first ZET series cooler to be launched for sale, the ZET 5. Available in black or white colourways, the ZET 5 features a jet engine-inspired aesthetic with dual fans, integrated ARGB LED accents and a five-heatpipe design that is rated for processors with a TDP of up to 200W. Read on to learn more about the ZET 5, and to see if it's any good as part of a test bench powered by AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor!

Summary of Specifications

• Colours: Black or white
• Supported Platforms: AM4, AM5, LGA1700, LGA1200, LGA1151, LGA1150, LGA1155, LGA1156
• Material: 5x heat pipes, aluminium, copper, ABS
• Dimensions: 130mm x 117mm x 158mm (H)
• Fan Type: 2x 120mm fans (proprietary and attaches to the cooler tower via magnets)
• Fan Speed: 600-2000 RPM ± 10%
• Fan Airflow: 44.48 CFM ± 10%
• Fan Pressure: 1.4mmH20 ± 10%
• Fan Bearing Type: Hydro bearings

Packaging & Accessories

The ZET 5 ships in a brown cardboard box with the usual product descriptions and illustrations on all sides of the box.

Opening up the box, we catch a glimpse of some cartoon characters – in case you’re wondering, Mansu & Mansters are Zalman’s brand mascots.

Within the cardboard box, we get a galactic-themed cylindrical plastic container that holds the ZET 5 cooler, as well as another flat square cardboard box that contains the accessories that the ZET 5 comes with.

In terms of accessories, the ZET 5 comes with a tube of Zalman's ZM-STC10 thermal paste, an instruction manual, a marketing leaflet in the form of a boarding pass, the requisite screws and standoffs for AMD and Intel motherboards, an Intel motherboard backplate, as well as two mounting brackets.

Aesthetics & Build Quality

The ZET 5 has an eye-catching jet turbine-inspired design, where it has dual fans and a cowl that’s made of plastic. The fans each have an ARGB lighting ring, and we do also get an ARGB LED lighting strip right down the center of the plastic cowl. The cooler's plastic cowl has the Zalman wordmark and logo printed on it, which reminds me of the way aircraft engine manufacturers such as General Electric and Rolls Royce would display their brands on a commercial jet’s engine cowling.

The dual 120mm fans attach to the main cooler tower by means of five small circular magnets, where the fans utilise a pogo pin connection system for the fans' power and ARGB LEDs.

Taking a closer look at the included fans, they feature what Zalman terms an “annular” fan design that improves efficiency and stability. The fans feature a RPM range of between 600-2000 RPM, a CFM rating of 44.48, and a supposed maximum noise level of no more than 30.4dB.

The ZET 5 uses a 4-pin PWM connector and a 3-pin addressable RGB connector that runs to the main cooler tower, where they connect to the dual fans by means of pogo pin connectors on either side. Such a configuration definitely helps on the cable management side of things.

Moving over to the bottom of the cooling tower, we see that the ZET 5 features five reverse direct-touch heatpipes, or RDTH for short, which have a chrome finish. Another feature that Zalman touts is the use of direct soldering between the heat pipes and heatsink assembly so as to enhance heat transfer efficiency.

Installation Experience

The installation process for this CPU cooler on the AM5 platform (or AM4 for that matter seeing as both platforms share the same mounting mechanism for a CPU cooler) is pretty straightforward, where you’ve got to mount the appropriate mounting hardware on to your motherboard. With an AM5 or AM4 motherboard, the ZET 5 utilises the stock AMD backplate that comes included with your motherboard, and you'll have to secure two metal brackets to your motherboard's backplate via four plastic posts and four screws.

After applying thermal paste to your processor, the main tower cooler assembly is secured to the mounting brackets by means of two Philips-head screws. With the cooler assembly in place, you can then go ahead to attach the two fans, and hook up the four-pin PWM fan connector as well as three-pin 5V ARGB connector to your motherboard.

For you folks using Intel systems, the installation process is very similar to the AMD setup process, with the key difference being that you’ll need to install the motherboard backplate pictured above that comes included with the ZET 5 first, before proceeding to install the four standoffs and mounting brackets like with the AMD setup, and thereafter mounting the cooler tower accordingly. It’s worth noting that the included Intel backplate has adjustable ends so as to fit either a LGA1200/LGA115X motherboard, or a LGA1700 or LGA1851 motherboard – the LGA1700 and LGA1851 sockets both share the same mounting hole positions for a CPU cooler, and pictured above is an ASUS ROG STRIX Z890-A GAMING WIFI LGA1851 motherboard designed for Intel’s latest Core Ultra 200 series of processors.

For the installation demo above on the Intel platform, I didn’t have an actual Intel processor installed on the motherboard, but securing the cooler to the motherboard’s a simple matter of tightening the same two Philips head screws to the screw posts on the respective mounting brackets.

RGB Aesthetics

In terms of its RGB lighting effects, I personally quite like the fan’s aesthetics, especially with the ARGB lighting rings that do add some character to CPU cooler’s overall appearance.

Thermal & Acoustic Performance

To put the ZET 5 through its paces, I’ll be using it as part of a test bench that's powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor that has a default CPU TDP of 120W. The test bench has the following specifications:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (stock settings, PBO & Curve Optimiser disabled)
• CPU Cooler: Zalman ZET 5
• CPU Thermal Paste: Zalman ZM-STC10
• Motherboard: Gigabyte X670E AORUS MASTER (F38b BIOS)
• Memory: 32GB (2x16GB) KingBank DDR5 Dark Heatsink UDIMM 6000MHz (DDR5 6000 CL28-35-35-76 1.45V)
• Storage: Lexar NM790 1TB NVMe SSD
• Graphics Card: MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16G GAMING TRIO OC
• PSU: Cooler Master MWE Gold 1050 V2 ATX 3.0
• Case: Open-air test bench
• Monitor: Gigabyte M27U 27" LCD monitor (4K, 160Hz)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro (24H2 with all latest drivers and updates installed)
• Graphics Driver: GeForce Game Ready Driver 581.29

For benchmarking purposes, I left the fan curves on their stock settings with no further tweaks. In addition, all tests were carried out in a non-airconditioned room with an ambient temperature of around 30.5°C.

Processor temperature (Tctl/Tdie) and fan RPM readings were obtained via HWiNFO64's sensor readouts that were logged during benchmarking.

Benchmark Tests

• Cinebench 2024 Multi-core Benchmark
• F1 23 In-game Benchmark

Thermals, Clock Speeds & CPU Power - Cinebench 2024 Multi-core Benchmark

First up, we’ve got Cinebench 2024’s multi-core test, where the Ryzen 7 7800X3D achieved a multi-core score of 1039, with an average CPU temperature reading (Tctl/Tdie) of 83.0°C, a low of 81.4°C, and a high of 83.1°C - the ZET 5's fans ran at around 2019RPM during the benchmark. Also, during the multi-core test, the Ryzen 7800X3D boosted to a maximum clock speed of 4584MHz, achieved an average clock speed of 4493MHz and an average CPU package power draw figure of 72.6W.

Thermals - F1 23 In-game Benchmark

Moving on to F1 23’s in-game benchmark test, where I ran a five-lap test for around nine minutes in total, the 7800X3D achieved an average CPU temperature of 59.2°C, a low of 56°C, and a high of 74.4°C with the ZET 5. These results were achieved with the ZET 5's fans running at an average speed of 1565RPM during the benchmark.

Thermals - Idle

In terms of idle temperatures, the Ryzen 7 7800X3D achieved an average CPU temperature reading of around 46.2°C, with a low of 44.1°C, and a high of 53.0°C. When idle, the ZET 5's fans ran at an average speed of 1143RPM.

Acoustics & Fan Noise

Ambient Noise Levels: ~49dB

Idle: ~51.9dB (GPU fans were inactive)

Load (Cinebench 2024 Multi-core): ~55dB (GPU fans were inactive)

To measure noise levels, I placed a decibel meter around 30cm away from the ZET 5. In addition, the test bench's graphics card fans were inactive when noise levels were being recorded.

Conclusion & Pricing

To sum things up, given the Zalman ZET 5’s thermal performance, it’s clearly designed for use with mid-range processors such as AMD’s Ryzen 5 or Ryzen 7 X3D offerings, and perhaps Intel’s Core i5 and Core Ultra 5 line-up. The ZET 5’s key selling point would be its looks – I think it’s quite safe to say I haven’t seen any other CPU air coolers in town with such an eye-catching aesthetic, where given that’s its not overly wide as well, it’d allow you to showcase your RGB RAMs with ease too.

As of the time of publishing this review, the ZET 5 Black is available to purchase in Singapore for a price of around $95 Singapore dollars – for you international viewers, the ZET 5 doesn't seem to be available in places such as the United States or Europe as of yet (i.e. from typical channels such as Amazon and Newegg), but $95 Singapore dollars converts to roughly $73 US dollars, which is unfortunately on the pricier side of things for sure - for this price, you can definitely purchase a CPU air cooler with much better thermal performance. That said, I can see how this cooler would still appeal to folks who are really sold on its unique aesthetics and might not mind paying a price premium as such - do note that should you choose to do so, it'd be better to pair the ZET 5 with a mid-range processor that isn't too difficult to cool.

Get this CPU cooler from Amazon: https://amzn.to/4gHDd80 (affiliate link)

Get this CPU cooler from Lazada Singapore: https://s.lazada.sg/s.XJLtH (affiliate link)

Get this CPU cooler from Shopee Singapore: https://s.shopee.sg/30ez0tnCeR (affiliate link)

The CPU cooler featured in this video was a marketing sample provided on loan from CDL Trading Pte Ltd, the authorised distributor for Zalman in Singapore.