Zaward Vapor 120:

Our fifth contestant in the shootout is a relative newcomer to CPU cooling - Zaward. Although they have been a leading manufacturer of DC fans for over 24 years, they are new to the heatsink and overall cooling solution scene. Today we look at their latest multi-socket unit - the Vapor120. The Vapor120 is also the only cooler from Zaward that supports LGA1156 and LGA1366 sockets.
The stock image below shows you what the Zaward Vapor120 is all about.



Once out of the shipping box, we get our first glimpse of the packaging. In the first image on the left, you can see the box is a bright red with a big cutout that takes up most of the front showing the unique fan. Even though they are not necessarily an established brand like Zalman or Cooler Master, this would definitely garner interest sitting on the shelf of a brick and mortar store. The image on the right shows you the back of the box which lists the specifications. The sides have some illustrations showing the technology involved in the Vapor120's implementation, and a few images of the cooler's features.



The next section of images details the accessories that come with the Vapor120 and the included fan. In the below left image you can see that there are quite a few parts involved. From top to bottom, left to right we have four fan brackets, a universal mounting plate covered in a neoprene type material, a tube of high quality thermal compound, four mounting bolts, a handy-dandy Allen wrench, four fully threaded nuts for spacing and to secure the universal plate to the motherboard, four screws for attaching the mounting brackets to the heatsink, four mounting nuts for securing the heatsink to the motherboard, four nylon washers, an AMD mounting bracket, and an Intel mounting bracket. The image on the right is a close-up of the included fan, where the interesting thing to note is that the fins have round dimples on them. This is Zaward's patented "golf ball dimple fan blade" for enhanced air flow. Since Zaward is known for their fans, we have high hopes for this implementation.



The next series of images deal with the heatsink itself. In the image on the left, you can see a top-down view of the Vapor120. Every single fin has numerous dimples - we can assume that this is also their patented "golf ball" implementation intended to get more of the fin surface into the stream of air. You can also see there are only three heatpipes, the fewest of any heatsink in this shootout. As you can see from the image on the right - similar to the Cooler Master Hyper 212+, this is also a direct contact cooler and the same care should be taken if you choose to lap it.



Finally, we get the Vapor120 mounted on our testbed and ready for evaluation. The image on the right shows our equipment in our test case. The space between the cooler and our PCI Express video card is not of concern even though the fan clips are close, they do not make contact. You could certainly rotate the cooler 90 degrees if you were concerned about shorting out your card, .



Sadly, we could not find a retailer currently offering the Zaward Vapor120.