CoolerMaster GeminII S CPU Cooler Evaluation

For our latest installment of CoolerMaster goodness we are taking a look at one of their CPU coolers.
Named the GeminII S it is reminiscent of the Silver Stone NT06, but with a few differences. The CoolerMaster offering has cooling fins for (potential) extra cooling. Will this be enough for today’s hot CPUs?  Read on to find out.

Product: CoolerMaster |GeminII S CPU cooler
Author: Sean Kalinich           
Category: Enthusiast(entry)/High-End HTPC            
Reviewed on: August 26th 2008
Product cost: $35.99
Manufacturer: CoolerMaster
Spelling and Grammatical Editors: Paul Mercer

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{mospagebreak title=Packaging and Accessories}
Packaging and Accessories:
The GeminII S arrived in a small yet… I guess colorful is the word I am looking for. Every side had some sort of information or logo on it. The back of the box is tightly packed with images and text describing why the GeminII S is the best cooler(!).
Opening the box we find the GeminII S tucked securely away in a tight cardboard tray. Here we also find all of the things we will need to get the GeminII S installed and running.  One interesting addition is the rails for adding on two 80mm or 92mm fans. Although this is a nice touch and it should be no problem to cobble together a couple of extra fans I think that CoolerMaster would have done better to provide a method for adding a second 120mm fan for additional cooling. Either way the rails do provide you with options for cooling.
Other items in the box are mounts for AMD and Intel CPUs, all of the screws you will need and a small socket that can be used with either a flathead or Phillips screwdriver. You can use this to tighten the bolts for the base plate with. The included tube of thermal paste from CoolerMaster is not much more than standard thermal interface material, but if that is all you have it works.

{mospagebreak title=Design}
Design:
The GeminII S is a combination heat-pipe and traditional “finned” CPU cooler. There are five heat pipes that pull heat from the CPU up into a series of fins where this heat is removed by a 120mm fan.  But the fun does not stop there, CoolerMaster has also added in fins that should help remove heat from the CPU block.
To add to the cooling power of the GeminII S, you can also remove the 120mm fan and replace it with two 80mm or 92mm fans, this will allow the GeminII S to cool your CPU as well as your RAM and, to a limited degree, any passive chipset cooling you may have on your mainboard.
For mounting CoolerMaster came up with a novel design. Instead of mounting from the bottom up your screws actually mount though the top of the mount legs and extend down through the board.
From there you attach bolts to the underside of the mount bracket and use the included socket drive to tighten them up. It was a much easier job to install the GeminII S than many other coolers I have used.
On the downside you will have to remove your mainbaord to mount the GeminII S unless you pick it up with a new build.

{mospagebreak title=Performance}
Performance:
Here is where the rubber meets the road, a cooler can have all the nice features, the best looking design and even the quickest mounting, but if it cannot keep your CPU cool it is wasted money.
For testing I compared the GeminII S to the stock cooler that ships with the Core 2 Duo 8400 Wolfdale CPU.
Temperatures shown are the highs for idle, and each type of CPU load.

I did not note the minimum or average temps as they are not what is going to kill your CPU it is that Maximum temp spike that will do the job.
For CPU load I used HyperPi 0.99b, AutoGK 2.45, Lightwave 9.3 x64 and Lost Planet DX10.
I also used multiple temperature applications to read the CPU temps:
RealTemp – Core0/Core1
CoreTemp – Core0/Core1
Asus AI Suite – Die Temp as a single reading.
It is interesting to note the differences between these applications.

The Test System
Intel C2D 8400 (WolfDale)
Asus P5Q Deluxe
Mushkin XP2-8500 4GB DDR2-1066 (2x2GB)
Asus EAH3850 Smart OC
Western Digital RaptorX 150GB HDD
CoolerMaster 850Watt PSU (RS-850-EMBA)
Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate x64

Idle:
My idle temps were taken after the system had been powered up and left to sit for 45 minutes.

Here the GeminII S did well but for some reason AI Suite showed it having a higher temp than the Stock Cooler.

Load testing:
HyperPi
For HyperPi I ran a full 32M run on both cores and checked the peak temps.

AutoGK
AutoGK was used to transcode a full 2 hour movie from DVD source to Xvid at 100% quality; again maximum temps were recorded during the Transcoding.

Lightwave 9.3 x64
For my Lightwave load testing I rendered frame 32 of the moonbase scene (found on the Lightwave 8 content CD1) I used a resolution of 1920×1080 (1080i HD), a 7-Pass PLD AA filter and a Guassian Sharp reconstruction filter; as with all other tests maximum temperatures were recorded.

Gaming:
For gaming I only used one game but it is one of the few that was developed from the ground up for multi-core CPUs and also have DX10 support. I ran through about 45 minutes of gaming in Lost planet at 1600×1050 resolution 2x AA and 16x AF. I played on the hardest difficulty level (which means I died a lot). To allow for the CPU to come into play more.

Performance conclusions:
In just about all of the testing the GeminII S was roughly 10 degrees cooler than the Stock cooler from Intel.  Not bad at all for the price.

{mospagebreak title=Overclocking}
Overclocking
Since I wanted this to be about cooling and not overclocking performance on the CPU I started off with voltage adjustments. I found that with the stock cooler even bumping up to 1.25 caused instabilities as the stock cooler just would not take the extra heat. I was very surprised by this but in the end I did not run any overclocking test with it. For the GeminII S I found that it was capable of handling up to 1.35v (I also bumped the FSB to 400MHz) on the E8400 but pushing the vCore much higher than that would probably cause you grief. I know I did not have to bump the voltage that much to get the extra 66MHz but since this is about cooling the CPU the extra voltage shows the cooling abilities of the GeminII S.

{mospagebreak title=Price}
Price
The GeminII S sells for $35.99 at NewEgg and is available from most Internet e-Stores. This is not a bad price at all considering many other third-party coolers are over $50 (and many of those do not come with fans). Also for the cost of a couple of 92mm fans you have the additional capability to cool your RAM and chipset more efficiently, in all not a bad deal for the price.

{mospagebreak title=Conclusion}
Conclusion:
I was very happy with the GeminII S although it is not the Cooler of choice if you are looking to do major overclocking it will keep things cool if you just want to bump your system up a little. In terms of noise I was actually able to hear my PSU fan over the GeminII S so you are not looking at having to deal with a screamer to keep your system cool. I would put this cooler in the Entry Level Enthusiast and High End HTPC category as far as who this will benefit the most. It is light years ahead of any stock cooler but not at the top of the heap quite yet.

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