Cooler Master GeminII S524 CPU Cooler

Installation

Installation of the GeminII S524 starts with installing the correct bracket for your socket. For our testing we used the AMD bracket. The bracket itself attaches to the base with very small screws and can be rotated 90 degrees to allow the cooler to point up or down as well as left and right. On the right we see the backplate. This backplate is compatible with all of the sockets and is very easy to use.

Installing the cooler was simple. Once the mounting bracket is in place on the cooler, you just have to put some paste on the CPU and hold the cooler in place while you secure it to the backplate. In these pictures we see the cooler in what is probably going to be its most used position, cooling the RAM. On the right you can see that standard height RAM sticks have plenty of room to spare and that even fairly high profile heatsinks could fit underneath. The exact clearance is a total of 47mm.

Here we see the GeminII installed in another position over the motherboard MOSFETs. This is very handy for people with lower-end motherboards that don’t have any sort of heatsink on the MOSFETs and could provide a little more overclocking headroom.

Testing

Test System

• AMD Phenom II 965 @ 3.85 GHz
• Asus Crosshair III
• Kingston Value RAM 2 x 2GB
• OCZ ModXStream 700W
• Sapphire 6950 DiRT 3 Edition

To test the overall effectiveness of the GeminII we took not only the CPU temperature, but also the RAM and motherboard MOSFET temps using a thermometer gun. These results were then compared to those of a tower style cooler, the Cooler Master V8. All temperature readings are in degrees Celsius. Noise level was measured using a standard decibel meter approximately 12 inches from the fan.

Temperature Testing

The GeminII performed pretty well with CPU temps hitting 32 degrees at idle and 51 degrees at load. But it really shines when we start to look at RAM and MOSFET temps. When the GeminII was pointed over the RAM, they hovered at 36 degrees under full load while they were closer to 42 degrees with the V8.

It’s the same story with the MOSFETs. They stayed around 43 degrees at full load with the V8 but only 37 degrees with the GeminII.

One thing that you have to take into consideration when looking at these results is that you must make the choice of what you want cooled. Although both the RAM and the MOSFETs have good temperatures with the GeminII, it is only able to actively cool one of them depending on its orientation.

Noise Testing

To test the noise level of the GeminII, I placed a decibel meter about 12 inches from the fan and took the average reading. At it’s lowest speed, roughly 800 RPM, the cooler registered at only 45db. With the case door on and the case sitting a few feet away, the noise was virtually inaudible.

With the fan at full speed, about 1800 RPM, the meter jumped up to 56db. By this point the cooler is making a fair bit of noise, even with the case closed and sitting a few feet away. However, it is nothing compared to the roar of most modern graphics cards and therefore shouldn’t be a problem when both are being loaded.

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