HardwareHell

Introduction
I’m sure most all of you who will read this review know of Cooler Master and also know they make a wide variety of products for the PC enthusiast, so I’m not going to bore you with the history and the company’s motto and so forth. What I am going to do is check out one of their new cpu coolers called the GeminII-S. This cooler is a smaller twist on the GeminII which was a huge cooler taking two 120mm fans on its top and covering some serious real estate.
The GeminII-S is actually a half sized version of its bigger predecessor, taking only one 120mm fan and taking up a lot less of motherboards real estate. In this review will see if cutting the cpu cooler in half was a good thing or not and take a look at what the end results of doing this are.

Taking a look at the sides and back of the package you’ll see the almost “Industry Standard” pictures, features and specifications. You’ll also see that in one image you see two fans attached to the cooler, but we’ll get to that later. Right now let’s open the box and get to the meat of this review.

First Looks
Pulling the product from the box, we can see that it’s been very well packed and I think even the UPS guy would find it hard to damage this in shipping (Although I’m sure he’ll try). After getting everything spread out for inspection and installation you can see there a lot of “Stuff” that comes with this cooler. The reason for all the hardware is that this cooler fits both the Intel lga775 and AM2/AM2+ cpu socket types, and also socket 940. For a complete list of all this coolers features and specifications you can take a look and the Coolmaster web site
Cooler Master GeminII-S

Ok now let’s take a look at the actual cooler before we go and install it on a board. I took the fan off to get a good look at the construction of the cooler and as stated in the spec’s it is densely packed with cooling fins.

Flipping the cooler I found that all of the fins that are over the cpu contact plate actually connect to it. You can also see that there are five copper heat pipes that run from the contact plate up and through the aluminum fins. All in all this is a well constructed heatsink and fairly beefy for it smaller size, but we’ll see if it can perform in a bit. First I’ll give you an idea of how it’s installed.

Installation
I’m installing it on an Intel platform and to do this I first ran the hold down screws onto the cooler brackets, then installed the brackets onto the cooler. After that was done I added the rubber bushings the the hold downs and was ready to attach the unit to my motherboard.

Placing the cooler on my motherboard and flipping it over, while holding the cooler on the board, I added the four black washers and nuts to the hold downs and tightened the whole thing down.
*NOTE – There’s not a set torque/tightness for the nuts, but I tend to use my fingers and get them a bit past snug**

As you can tell from the pictures there’s plenty of room after the unit is installed, although depending on your system you may have to place it in a different orientation so as to clear taller ram coolers or a tall chip heatsink.
Usage and Performance
My test system consisted of the following hardware

BFG 680i Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Q6600 2.4Ghz

2x 1gb OCZ DDR2 800Mhz

WD 160gb SATA 3gb/s

GeForce 7800GT OC

1000w Tiger psu

Everything was set up on a HSPC Test bench.
Now I was going to include some side by side comparisons , but unfortunately, the temperatures in my area went from a nice 70F/21C to over 90F/34C and with no signs of letting up. I had already run all my testing on the GeminII-S so, I’m going to give you my results without a direct comparison.
With the GeminII-S system running at idle for around an hour my temps were fairly steady at 30 to 32 Celsius and under load 43 to 47 Celsius. After letting the system run for around 4 hours, I then decided to push the clock on the cpu and see what I could get the temps up to. I pushed the cpu to 3.4Ghz and then took temp reading again at idle and under load and the readings I got are as follows. While at idle the temps were between 40 an 43 Celsius and under load 64 to 68 Celsius. All temps were taken using Core Temp and to load my system I used Everest Ultimate’s stability/stress test.

Conclusion
My final thoughts on this cooler are mixed. I like the fact that it’s a smaller cooler and a refreshing choice in today’s market where bigger seems to be the trend. I do not however think it does quit as well as it could or should. I’ve read and personally tested dozens of coolers over the years and this one just doesn’t seem to perform as well as other coolers in the same size bracket.
Once the weather calms a bit in my area I do plan to revisit this cooler and pit it against some other coolers that are in the same size range as the GeminII-S to back up my statements, but for now I will say that if you are looking for a smaller form factor cooler that’s built good and you’re not looking for top of the line cooling this is one you might take a look at , if however you want the most cooling possible you might just want to look at some others.

All that being said I award the Cooler Master GeminII S
6 out of 10

I would like to thank Cooler Master for sending this Item in for review
Spider_Webb