First Looks
The Zalman ZM1000-HP Plus has a black, rough casing with the Zalman logo prominently displayed on the outward facing side. Zalman pitches the dual heatpipe cooling system on the side. The top shows the output chart, regulatory declarations, and some other information, including the 80PLUS Silver logo.
The rear is honeycombed for increased airflow from the 140mm intake fan pushing air through the dual heatpipe cooling system. Unlike its predecessor, the ZM1000-HP Plus has a power switch. The absence of a power switch was a major detraction for me on the ZM850-HP.
The bottom has a lightly-protected 140mm ball bearing fan. This fan should be very quiet while supplying more airflow than its 120mm or 130mm brothers in other units. The Zalman logo is on the bottom, too.
The business end of the power supply — where the modular cables connect — has a little bit of venting at the top. The cable egress isn’t protected with plastic guards, and some of the cables are not sleeved like all of the other cables. Sleeving helps airflow considerably and almost no power supplies don’t have sleeved cables these days.
For connectivity, there are nine SATA connectors, eight 4-pin device connectors, one floppy connector, three 6-pin and three 6+2-pin PCI-Express connectors, one 4+4-pin ATX/EPS CPU connector, and, of course, a 20+4-pin motherboard connector.
Worth noting is the ZM1000-HP Plus’s rail distribution.
| 12V1 | PCIE3, PCI4, ATX, 4-pin/FDD |
|---|---|
| 12V2 | Motherboard, ATX |
| 12V3 | PCIE1, PCIE2 |
| 12V4 | PCIE5, PCIE, SATA |
This configuration spreads the load across the rails nicely. Think about it for a moment: If you run a system like mine, you’ll have motherboard, ATX, two PCIE, plus some SATA and some 4-pins in use. That puts load on all the rails, not maxing any of them, except perhaps 12V2. Smart, Zalman.
