360° View - Zalman LQ310 - Water Block Information on Frostytech's test methodology is available here.
The Zalman LQ310 waterblock stands 28mm tall. There are no provisions for removing the 11mm OD tubes for refilling the system or cleaning. The metal mounting brackets slip over the top of the pump, so installation is largely tool free. Power is supplied to the pump by a 3-pin motherboard fan header. Both pipe connections swivel.
The pump head measures 72mm in diameter. This economy water cooler does not have any LEDs to indicate operational status of the pump.
The copper base plate is roughly 2mm thick and held by eight small screws. The heatspreader is 54mm in diameter, more than large enough for the big CPUs from the Intel and AMD stables.

360° View - Zalman LQ310 - Heat Exchanger Information on Frostytech's test methodology is available here.
	The 27mm thick aluminum heat exchanger measures 153x120mm in size and supports one or two 120mm fans, mounted back to front.
	Fans can be attached on either side of the heat exchanger with the threaded holes. The rubber tubing connectors into the liquid-to-air heat exchanger are metal and do not swivel.

Base Finish and Flatness

Flipping a heatsink over to inspect the business end is often a simple indicator of overall cooler quality. More practically speaking, a heatsink is in many ways only as effective as the contact it makes with the processor - the flatter and smoother the better. Base finish is one of the criteria that Frostytech measure in the course of evaluating heatsinks, and it involves two distinct aspects. Surface Finish is the first; this is calculated with the aid of Surface Roughness Comparator that has a cross section of common machine surface finishes and their numerical surface roughness equivalents in microinches. The second is Surface Flatness. This is tested with an engineer's straight edge or proven flat surface, in two axes.

The copper base plate of Zalman's LQ310 waterblock has a machined finish with a surface roughness of approximately ~16 microinches. The manufacturer ships it with a pre-applied circle of grey thermal compound. The copper base plate is very slightly convex in both axis.

The surface quality of the copper waterblock is visible below, after the thermal compound has been removed.

Next, acoustic measurements and then AMD and Intel synthetic thermal test result charts.